No business is too insignificant to be overlooked by threat actors, and the facts back that up: a survey conducted by Small Business Trends revealed that 43 percent of cybercrimes targeted small businesses, and a whopping 60% of those companies were out of business within six months of a successful cyberattack.

Massive fines due to lack of compliance with regulations, accompanied by reputational damage and the subsequent loss of customers and partners were key factors in this outcome.

How Security Can Enhance Your Business Reputation

Positive reputation is key to establishing partnerships and persuading potential clients to go for your company’s solutions. This reputation is an external evaluation based on aspects such as direct experience, communications, independent evaluations and established thought leadership.

Information security professionals too often leave business reputations up to other departments or employees. However, they play no small role in how that organization’s reputation functions and evolves.

Here are some recommendations security professionals can do to assist.

Initiate Solid Partnerships And Respect The SLAs

Word of mouth still plays a major role in business success even in the 21st century. When choosing a vendor, companies tend to rely on other parties vouching for their trustworthiness. The best place to start is with your first or oldest customers.

Recommendations from those with good reputations lend more authority and add weight to your opinion. A five-star rating demands five-star quality services and security substance to back it up. The longer you are in a successful collaboration with a partner or customer, the better chances you have in getting new clients thanks to a positive evaluation. A happy customer will always “spread the joy”.

Publish Your Security Practices

Demonstrate that you take security seriously by publishing your security and privacy practices on your website. You can achieve this by having a dedicated “Security” page (link usually present in the footer menu) where you illustrate how you protect data and how you handle privacy. You don’t need to get into too much detail; general practices based on renowned standards should be enough.

Of course, you have to put your money where your mouth is, in case you get audited.

Earn Credentials That Reflect Expertise And High Standards

Associating with institutions and obtaining certifications, as well as demonstrating compliance with national and international standards, allows potential clients to expect standard behavior rather than just taking your word for it. It’s also a good way to avoid having to complete long and repetitive security questionnaires needed for the client’s due diligence.

ISO 27001 is THE most popular information security standard in the business world. More and more companies are achieving ISO 27001 certification to prove the reliability of their information security management.

Compliance with ISO 27001 was previously about having a competitive edge, but as ISO 27001 certification becomes more prevalent, it’s starting to become a minimum entry to a tender or contract renewal.

Depending on your business domain, you might need to be compliant with other standards, such as PCI (managing card data), SOX (managing financial information for public companies), HIPAA (managing health data) just o name a few, but ISO 27001 is a generic and international one and a good one to start with.

Conclusion

Small businesses that follow the suggestions discussed above will be able to retain their good name, as well as customer loyalty. Most security incidents occur because of negligence caused by employees or contractors. In such situations, how a company treats its business partners can make all the difference.

A good security program helps to solve these requirements and Ciatrine can help you set one up.

Contact us to learn more!