Client attraction brings you sales, while client retention brings you credibility.  

Once your business becomes credible, you automatically attract new clients. How do you do that? Well, you need to work towards building trust with your client. You pitch to a client and the client wants your services. As a startup, you are responsible for treating each client with the utmost respect and thoroughly understanding their requirements. 

Treating your clients with respect means respecting the privacy of their data. In today’s day and age of data, data breaches have become one of the biggest vulnerabilities for businesses. Especially if you are a startup, you need to take extra precautions while dealing with your and your client’s data. A single mishap can cause a client to back out. 

When securing any data, you need to make sure how you are collecting it, saving it, and sharing it. If you are a US-based startup, you should get to know how to regulate data from credible sources like Osano’s guide to data privacy laws. Depending on your state, the privacy rules vary, so you need to adhere to the laws of the state your business is set in. Similarly, every country has its own set of data privacy rules. 

Whether you want to grow your business or protect it (you want to retain your clients), data protection is necessary. Only if a client can trust you with their data will he be willing to work long-term with you. 

The article focuses on five ways that can help you secure your and your business’ data: 

5 ways to secure your business and clients as a startup 

Treating data with care means following the best practices of data saving and sharing. It also means efficient ways of recovering data in case of an unexpected data leak. 

Let’s look at five ways you can prevent a data breach from occurring in the first place. 

Deal with data cautiously

Protecting a client or your business is indirect to say, “Secure data.” Now, securing data includes protecting data for your business and your client. If your business requires sensitive data from them, you must have plans to keep the data secure. After all, a client’s trust depends on how you treat their data. 

Here are some parameters to keep in mind while dealing with client data:  

Accessibility 

To avoid a data leak, you need to limit data access to your employees or staff members. Less the number of people have accessibility, fewer chances of data breaches. 

Limit time 

It would be best if you also had to decide how long you want to retain your client’s data on your server. You should delete data not required for a longer time to avoid misconstrued data. 

Avoid sharing data through physical devices 

One can easily save gigabytes of data to a flash disk in seconds. So try not to share data via hard disks or any such physical devices as it makes it easy for hackers to steal the data. 

Collect only necessary information 

While collecting data from the client–consider collecting only the must-have information. Even if you gather some secondary information, make sure to trash it once it is not required.  

Have provision for immediate data backup 

For instance–your business suddenly suffered a data breach. Certainly, a data leak poses a threat to all the confidential data of your business or client. In this case, you need to have a backup plan to retain the lost data before it causes severe technical disasters. 

In 2021, 45% of US companies have experienced a data breach. This shows how crucial it is to ensure data security. Ideally, you should have measures to prevent a data breach as a data leak could even lead to losing clients. They might refrain from trusting your business. However, if, in a worst-case scenario, a data leak occurs, you need to have a recovery plan. 

Cybersecurity leaders will help you in such mishaps by investing in automated remote backup services. This will help you ensure that even if a data breach occurs suddenly, you can recover the data back. 

 

Some ransomware attacks might also cause some damage or partial data loss, however, these companies make sure to minimize the damages.

Use data segmentation 

Source 

Data segmentation is one of the smartest ways to protect internal data. It is simply saving data in segments so that even if one segment is compromised, it does not break down the entire system. Several industries use this practice, especially IT industries. However, it is still not a widely practised measure. 

Let us see how can data segmentation help you in protecting your data:

  • It buys you extra time if attackers try to steal your data
  • Reduces overall data loss since all networks are walled (separated from each other)  
  • Protects you from internal as well as external attacks 
  • Reduces damage even if attacks occur

Compartmentalizing data is also crucial if your business has a remote working facility for its employees. 

During the pandemic when employees were asked to work from home or even today, for those companies that run remotely, this practice can help minimize the chances of a data leak. Since all employees access company servers from their personal devices, data becomes more vulnerable.

While the benefits of implementing data segmentation are endless, it is required to be implemented the right way. Only a strong network will prevent a data breach. 

Protect your people 

Lastly, if you want to protect your business, you need to protect the people working with you. If you have a few employees working remotely or in an on-site setting, it is important to make them feel valued and show them how they are a huge asset to you. 

Today, employees are changing the definitions of healthy work culture. If they do not find a balance they’re looking for, they won’t hesitate to put the papers. Below are some of the reasons employees might choose to walk away from your company:

  • They don’t feel challenged 
  • They do not get a work-life balance 
  • They aren’t satisfied with the salary 
  • Company culture undergoes too many changes without proper communication 
  • They feel undervalued
  • No longer fit in the company culture 

To prevent employees from resigning from your company, you need to take care of the above-mentioned points. Plus, if you promote employee well-being and healthy work culture, it will lead to a good reputation and more people would like to work with you. This will also have a direct impact on client retention as they will also see you in a better light. 

Wrapping up ways of protecting your business and clients in 2022

Well, now you know the importance and impact of protecting a client’s data in retaining his/her trust. While the article talks about ways to protect data, simply protecting data is not enough to protect your business. Needless to say, it is one of the most important parameters to grow your business, but not the only one. 

As a startup, you also have to constantly keep coming up with innovative ways to address clients’ concerns and keep improving your marketing strategies to attract better prospects. 

Data protection is important especially for a small business since you are still building up. If you follow the most secure practices right from the start when it comes to data sharing and saving, it gets easy for clients to trust you with their data. This will help you generate leads and eventually improve sales. 

So, make sure your business follows these basic security practices and see your business flourish! 

Also Read: 10 Must-Read Books for Startup Success