By Adam Duran.
Digital Marketing Guide
Magnified Media
Running your business can be tough enough without having to worry about scammers trying to dupe you and your staff. In this article, we go through the systems you need to create to keep your business safe and secure.
Top 3 Most Common Scams
Phishing scams – Phishing scams are generally email-based scams that ask for a service or look like Paypal/Amazon/Bank emails. Some of them get sophisticated. Don’t click on any links in any email from any company unless you know them. A lot of times, those are spoofed websites. Instead, go directly to the site and log in to your account to check.
Invoice scams – Business owners get invoices for their domain names. The invoice has a lot of information because a lot of it is public. You can confirm on the spreadsheet if these are real. Designate one person in your staff to handle stuff like this. That way, your staff won’t go on and sign you up for a new domain.
Award scams – Award scams will send emails for you to pay them money so you can claim your award. They usually have an option for your award to be shown on your website so they can take monthly charges from you. A lot of times, these are directory sites and it is their way to hook you in.
Cybersecurity Checklist for Small Businesses
- Limit access to everything. Don’t have only one email address controlling everything in your organization. You don’t want to give anyone the same email address and password that you have.
- Every staff member has a separate email address that you control. Make your email address the super admin so you can manage all email subaccounts. You want to have email addresses that connect to your domain, not Gmail accounts because you have complete control over it. That way, if you and your staff break up in some horrible fashion, it’s just one click of a button, and their access is denied.
- Every staff has no more than manager access. This means that they’re not the admin of your website. You don’t want anyone to have admin access but yourself.
- Keep a spreadsheet with this information – Make sure to keep a spreadsheet of all your business information. Share it with as few people as possible.
- For everyone, turn on two-factor authentication along with password-protecting devices. This means, that when your staff logs in to whatever device they have to log in from, it has that text authentication to log in. The purpose of this is that, if your staff loses his/her phone or somebody hacks their computer, they won’t have access to your business information.
- Make sure backups are being taken at regular intervals and software is always up to date. Back-up systems are standard in every hosting platform, make sure that your website is backed up regularly.
Those are some common scams and how you can protect your business from those.
Need an Agency You Can Trust?
Magnified Media is an online marketing agency specializing in online marketing for businesses and small companies throughout the San Francisco Bay Area and beyond. Based in San Francisco & Walnut Creek, California, we are their trusted outsourced marketing solution, focused on doing three things: getting them more online reviews, getting their website seen, and creating content for their social media platforms. Focusing on these key areas for our clients means they can run their business without worrying about when or where the next customer is coming. We help build their business through reputation. Interested in seeing what we can do for your business? Schedule your free Online Presence Audit now.
