By Laird Wilton
Businesses will lose $ 400 billion to hackers this year.
In addition to the financial cost, businesses can lose intellectual property, personal data, productivity hours, and consumer trust. What’s worse, companies often don’t think about cybersecurity until it’s too late.
If you don’t take a proactive and thorough approach to securing your data and systems at the beginning of your startup journey, you can lose contracts and block your growth. If you want to scale a B2B SaaS company quickly, you cannot afford to stumble upon data security issues. Otherwise, you will prevent growth and leave money on the table if large prospects dismiss you as “too risky”.
Startups are a particularly vulnerable target as they may think they are too small to be attacked (they are not) or they may not prioritize security, which puts their data at risk. Founders often only have security on their radar when there is a violation or when a customer or interested party asks about it.
Even then, they may think they are covered because they keep a table of policies, use the cloud, or don’t store any personal or sensitive information. However, this mindset creates loopholes that can open doors for hackers looking for easy access to sensitive data, no matter how big or small the company is. Fortunately, now is the time to take steps to protect your business.
1. Think about security from the start
Companies, especially B2B SaaS startups looking to sell their software, need to think about application security right from the start. It does not seem to be a priority in securing funding and bringing products to market. However, implementing security controls in the base code at the beginning will save you an incredible amount of money and time as your business begins to scale. Let your developers use OWASP (Open Web Application Security Project), which focuses on software security, to build protection and security into your foundation.
2. Document everything that has to do with safety
Document everything you do when your focus is on security and making plans for your company’s data management. Keep a record of your standards and guidelines, the methods you use, your implementation plan, and any tweaks – and do all of this before you are forced into a violation or problem.
By documenting your security practices, not only can you scale faster, but you can also gain an advantage when selling to businesses by quickly and easily answering customer security questions. Once you have buyers or reviewers looking at your security checkpoints, they’ll want to see your policies and procedures, and it won’t look good if you don’t have one. With this information, you can also penetrate more regulated regions such as the EU or industries with high data protection compliance such as healthcare.
3. Define the roles and responsibilities of your team
It’s not enough to know that someone in the C-suite is “good at security”. If you don’t already have a security team, deploy one. Also, don’t leave security responsibility solely to the CTO. Make sure everyone understands their role in data privacy and system security.
Have security meetings with your team and train everyone in security awareness, even if this only provides free resources. Do this in the early days of your business so that you have a culture of security from the start and not bother trying to team up if it suddenly becomes necessary.
Other items from AllBusiness.com:
4. Know your standards and regulations
Do you know which regional or industry-specific framework conditions, standards or regulations your company must comply with? For example, do you have to comply with SOC 2, ISO 2700, GDPR or HIPAA? Knowing what standards you need to adapt your security practices early on means more than just following the right protocols. If questions later come up in contracts or questionnaires from providers, you know how to answer them.
If you are not sure, you should implement CIS Critical Security Controls (CSC) from the Center for Internet Security. This is a set of basic standards that cover the most important cybersecurity issues for many types of businesses. The last thing you want is for your startup to get a regulator’s attention for not being compliant.
5. Robust security leads to healthy growth
An inadequate or non-security-related implementation harms your growing startup. Companies prefer to work with providers who they know are security conscious and will no longer accept liability in the future. Inadequate security can prevent you from entering different markets and regions, and it may also direct you to regulators.
However, an early commitment to security creates trust with companies who want to do business with you. This can become a differentiator for your business that can lead to sales with larger, more successful companies.
6. It will be more difficult later – so don’t wait
It will only prove to be more difficult and expensive if you wait until you have scaled up to implement security compliance, training, and protocols. With more customers, more employees, more resources, and more technology, trying to upgrade your systems to adhere to security frameworks – or worse, rewrite the source code – costs time, money, resources, and even the trust of your partners and customers. You don’t want to discover the corporate culture, and the habits you established from the start are at odds with the security practices required to attract corporate customers and increase sales. A little work at the beginning goes a long way.
Companies that hold vendors accountable for security practices will only benefit the industry as more companies protect themselves from the constant threats posed by hackers. Startups should not only make plans to protect customer data, but can expand their business through a security orientation.
As you scale your startup, be sure to create a culture of security awareness and implementation. This means realizing the value of protecting all the data your company collects. It’s never too early to start the process, but there may come a time when it is too late.
CONNECTED: 3 Digital Security Threats Your business can be overlooked
About the author
Contribution by: Laird Wilton
Laird Wilton is a tech entrepreneur, Techstars alumni, board member, and COO and co-founder of Securicy. He advises B2B SaaS companies on the implementation, maturation and expansion of information security programs that meet the strict standards of high-quality corporate customers. Laird has direct knowledge of the impact security can have on individual businesses and the general development of emerging technology companies.
Company: Security
Website: www.securicy.com
Connect with me on LinkedIn.
Comments are closed.