10 Must-Have Services to Protect Your Business This 2020

Starting a business is more rewarding than most things you will ever do in your life, but it is also more challenging than anything.

16:14 01 February 2020

You will go through more roadblocks and problems than you could possibly imagine, and it’s absolutely worth it. Nothing could help you grow as a professional like being a business owner. Despite the many sleepless nights and stressful months, most entrepreneurs wouldn’t have it any other way. At first, there are quite a few things that you will need to do to ensure that your business can and will grow, from hiring the right people to make the right investments. 

The most important thing you need to do, though, is ensuring that your business is well protected. These are 10 must-have services to protect your business this 2020.

Workers’ compensation insurance 

This is one of the most important services you will need to get to protect your business from legal ramifications. You need to get this as soon as you start the hiring process, and it is something you have to invest in because it is not really a luxury. For starters, it is pretty much a legal requirement in most states across a lot of countries, meaning the company is legally required to get it, no matter how big or small it is. The point of a worker’s compensation insurance is to cover worker’s medical bills, as well as disability and death benefits to their families should they get injured or die on the job. If you don’t have this insurance, you will be forced to pay these expenses out of your company budget, which can cost you a lot of money. 

By getting it, you will be protecting your business from lawsuits and claims that you were negligent, because in most cases, workers just accept having their expenses taken care of rather than suing, which will save your business a lot of nuisance. Even if it is a low-risk desk job, you should still get the worker’s compensation insurance because accidents happen there as well, and the claims to settle such incidents can be huge. 

Product liability insurance 

This is another type of insurance that is crucial to protect your business, but this one is geared at consumers rather than workers. If your company manufactures and sells any type of product, then you must get product liability insurance. Even if you follow the hierarchy of safety and quality standards, there is still always a chance that a product would malfunction or have issues. 

This is particularly important for companies that manufacture and sell products on a large scale to the general market because the probability of having malfunctioning products increases as the number of products you release increases. It happens quite often that a company might find itself named in a lawsuit because of a faulty product that caused injuries or other problems to users. 

A product liability insurance protects you in those cases as it provides coverage for such incidents, so your business wouldn’t have to pay any money in damages. The types of coverage even vary to provide tailored packages depending on the different product types. 

Payroll software 

You might find it a bit weird that payroll software is mentioned as an important service to protect your business, but it is actually pretty crucial if you want to avoid complications with your people’s payroll, and more importantly, the taxes needed. According to reports, the IRS got over $4 billion in penalties on businesses that failed to file proper tax reports. You won’t obviously pay that much on your own, but your business could pay a lot of money because an error occurred with the payroll taxes. It doesn’t even have to be an intentional error –– in most cases, it is a human one. This is why payroll software is quite important, as it will help your business accurately calculate the taxes that you have to pay. 

The software calculates not only employee wages, but also the proper taxation required, which is not as easy as you might think. When you start a business, you will learn that there are several different types of taxes, and they all need to be filed without a shred of error. 

HR management platform 

It is not just a payroll software solution that you will need, but also one for human resources. Just as human error is quite probable with payroll and tax calculations, it is just as frequent with compliance reporting and other human resources endeavors. For starters, there are certain recruitment regulations that your company has to follow, or else you might be subject to lawsuits and other legal complications. This applies to everything from maximum allowed leaves for employees to termination protocols. When you have an HR management platform used by the entire company, this reduces the possibility of any errors happening and in turn, help you avoid any possible lawsuits because some employees “didn’t know the proper regulations” and did something on their own accord. 

The platform will pull together all employee data in one location and will make it a lot easier for you to handle each one separately in terms of performance reports, leaves, and even warnings. This means you will be able to protect your business from any wrongful termination or misconduct lawsuits, which happen more often than you would think. 

VPN

The age of digitization we currently live in has helped businesses in more ways than you could list in one article, but it also brought some very serious problems with it. Having everything online means that security and privacy of information are often at risk, and that is actually true. It is a fact that businesses suffer from cyber-attacks on a daily basis, and if you are not diligent with protecting your business from those attacks, you can be in all sorts of trouble. As you can see in the article on las mejores VPN, one of the best ways to protect your business from such cyber threats is getting a virtual private network. It can provide your business with the necessary security and privacy to ensure that your online dealings and transactions are well protected and no one could hack or keep track of them. 

A VPN wouldn’t mean you shouldn’t get other protection services like a firewall and encryption, but what it does is it adds another layer of protection that ensures you get a private connection to the internet. This helps you also connect to the company database and domain remotely without having to worry about security since most public networks like in hotels or cafes are quite insecure and could entail a lot of hacking and piracy attempts. So, you can check your business systems remotely while on a vacation without having to worry about jeopardizing your systems. 

Firewall 

True to the last point, you will also need a business-class firewall. This isn’t exactly the same type you’d find on your personal laptop at home, which can still be easily hacked. A business-class firewall ensures that your systems are secured 24/7 throughout the year. This is basically your company’s first line of defense. What a firewall does is monitor incoming and outgoing traffic, and ensures that what should go through and what shouldn’t. If a computer from a foreign network tried accessing yours, it is the firewall that decides if access should be granted to that computer, and so on. 

The firewall also protects your networks and systems from being used without your knowledge for any illegal or shady purposes. This is particularly important in a world where data breaching is quite frequent and companies often find their secured data jeopardized. So, in a nutshell, getting a firewall is essential to protect your business at all times. 

Anti-virus and anti-malware software 

Just because you have a firewall and are using a VPN doesn’t mean you shouldn’t get anti-virus and anti-malware software. These are basically layers of protection for your business, and the more you have, the better. Sometimes the firewalls are penetrated, and you need to have a second and even third line of defense in those cases so you could protect your most critical data. 

Malware attacks are so frequent that they might happen on an hourly basis or even less. Those can easily mess with your business networks and cause all sorts of problems. Malicious links and emails are scattered and sent all over the internet, and if your people are not careful, your entire network can be at risk of some serious hacking attempts. Some of these malicious attacks could also infect your systems with a virus that could a lot more damage. Those can hold your entire data hostage or even compromise customer’s financial data, or much worse. Studies also predict that the frequency of these attacks will increase in the future, so it is quite important for your business’s security and protection to get anti-virus and anti-malware software. 

Employee training services 

While this isn’t exactly a software solution, it is just as important a service to your company’s protection as any. Most cyber-attacks that companies are exposed to happen because of a lack of awareness on employees’ end. They access unauthorized links and open spam emails due to this lack of awareness. This is why you must invest in a training service that regularly educates your people on the safest practices and how they should deal with any shady sites and emails. This will help them take the proper course of action if and when they encounter such situations, which in turn will keep your company much more secure. 

Security services 

 

While digital threats are much more eminent and common in this day and age, this doesn’t mean that they are the only ones out there. Whether you are a small or a big business, physical threats are also present and they are more common than you would think. This is why you need to invest in some competent security services. Hire a company to take care of this for you, because they will make your life a lot easier and you will be able to better sleep at night knowing that your company is safe because there is a security guard and/or a security system that cannot be easily hacked. 

These might seem like a bit much to you, but protecting your physical spaces is just as important as protecting your digital one, if not more, because if criminals get access to your premises, they can easily tamper with your networks and systems, too. This is why you need on-ground security services as well. So, do the math and figure out what would work best for your business. This can include a surveillance system, alarms, security guards, and whatever you see necessary to protect your company assets. 

Business legal expense insurance

We earlier talked about different important insurance policies for your business, but what if you still get sued for something you didn’t take into consideration? If you happen to be a small business, then you probably don’t have a dedicated legal department capable of handling such cases. If that happens, then you will need to hire legal counsel, which could cost you a fortune. This is why getting business legal expenses insurance is always a good idea. This way, you will be paying less money on a monthly basis that could help you avoid having to pay much more in case you need legal advice and/or litigation for one reason or the other in the future. Most of those insurance plans even give you the option to get insight on regulation compliance, employment laws, and just about any legal advice you need. 

There is much that needs to be done so you could protect your business, and it is worth it. Some of these might seem like a bit much to you, but a clever business owner is always prepared for the worst and takes all the necessary contingencies to ensure that their business can survive, no matter what happens.