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Tip of the Week: 5 Tips to Secure Your Business

In business, every dollar you spend on safeguarding your business assets is a dollar you can’t put to work to make a profit. This simple fact underpins the universal view of security as a “necessary evil”, resulting in most businesses choosing to have no protective measures or as little security in place as possible to keep costs down. While this approach is understandable, the failure to identify risks and vulnerabilities can leave business owners subject to litigation for negligence should a serious incident result in injury to employees or customers.

A smarter and more informed approach to a well planned and executed security program is to have just the right amount of security in place to provide adequate protection to employees and customers without wasting valuable financial resources on unnecessary security measures and expensive equipment. The question for the business owner then becomes, “How much security is actually needed to remain free from liability and potential loss to business reputation?”

Following are 5 important tips to help determine just the right amount of security for your business:

1. Start with an assessment. Understand that your business assets consist of several components – people, property, products, information, and reputation. List out your assets and then list the risks posed to each.

2. Evaluate and prioritize those risks. Use a matrix to plot three coordinates, (1) likelihood of occurrence, (2) consequences of occurrence and (3) seriousness of impact. The outcome of this exercise is called “incident criticality”. Once you determine the criticality of a risk, then you can prioritize your list and focus your resources on those security risks with the highest likelihood of occurrence and the most serious consequences and impact on your business.

3. Secure against unacceptable risks. Invest your security budget on the most critical risks that you have prioritized. You cannot achieve perfect security because the risk in today’s society is too diverse. To secure your business against every risk would require 100% focus on security and a bottomless budget. Rather, you should focus on achieving “robust security”, providing protection from those risks that are most likely to occur and carry the most devastating consequences to your business.

4. Approach security with a holistic view. When you evaluate your businesses risks, think holistically and include areas outside your normal four walls. As examples, if you have responsibility for products in your supply chain beyond your building, include the supply chain in your evaluation and planning. Or if employees are required to park offsite in a high-risk area, consider off-campus parking in your evaluation. Think holistically.

5. Engage all hands. Your people are your force multiplier. Engage your employees in the responsibility of safeguarding business assets, and ensure they take ownership for workplace security. A disengaged 50-person staff with a security guard has only two eyes focused on security, but an engaged 50-person staff with no guard has 100 eyes on security. Encourage security engagement.

Evaluating risk and effectively safeguarding your assets allows your business to invest only that capital necessary for robust security measures. It lets you make empirical decisions and removes the guesswork of how much is enough security for your business.

If your skills and training lie outside the security industry, consider hiring a subject matter expert to do your evaluation and help develop your security plan. Give us a call. We at Rampart Group have developed and implemented security plans for businesses large and small, domestically and abroad. We are your Go-To subject matter experts!

Kathy Leodler Chief Executive Officer Email:kathy.l@rampartgroup.com Phone: (360) 981-2703 PI License #3555

Paul Leodler Executive Vice President Email:paul.l@rampartgroup.com Phone: (360) 981-3397 PI License #4180

We at Rampart Group are committed to your security. Call 1-800 421-0614 or contact us today with your security or investigative needs.