Is your company in danger of closing down for good? Hopefully not, but how do you know for sure? Booming profits, sagging sales? Are these the indicators of future growth and success? Clearly they provide a major insight into the financial destiny of a company, but they don’t account for the risks that come from the sidelines when you least suspect them.
Business security is where most successful entrepreneurs tend to slack off. The clients are there, income is never dropping, only climbing, so what’s to worry about? Therein lies the problem. We don’t think about the many ways in which a seemingly indestructible enterprise can be slayed.
Having them in mind won’t eliminate the threat, but it definitely helps to be prepared. Here are the ever present risks to business security more entrepreneurs and business leaders need to think about:
Local Data Loss
The age of the cloud has gotten lots of folks accustomed to forgetting about the fragility of data. In the event sensitive or otherwise pertinent business documents and programs are compromised by a damaged drive, immediate action is necessary. The hallmark hard drive failure sounds and other signals of impending doom warrant a drop off to a professional data recovery service. Otherwise, hours of work could be lost – past, present, and future.
Automation
The elimination of jobs thanks to robots and software has historically been limited to the blue collar sector, but professions once deemed tech-proof are increasingly being taken over by artificial intelligence. Accountants, architects, attorneys, and so on are likely to start facing competition in the form of A.I. in the decades to come. Businesses thriving on the intellectual skills of a team or individual must take this into consideration if they plan to stick around for 20 or 30 years.
Regulations
Laws change. They get abolished, written and re-written, amended, and so on. These adjustments greatly affect and influence the ways a business functions. Be it tax code, prohibitive legislation, or altering of government regulations, it’s important for business leaders to stay on top of government action in their sector. More so, it pays to pay attention to government in general, as the economy is a web and one big change can affect everything. The greatest modern example of this is the enactment of the Affordable Care Act, otherwise known as Obamacare.
Self-Destruction
This is the number one risk to business security and one which few entrepreneurs like to think about. However, more times than not we wind up our own worst enemy. Blame mischief, technology, and government all you want, but often times it’s a matter of poor decision making and poor planning. Furthermore, neglecting personal health (long hours, lack of sleep, poor diet, etc), and therefore risking the chance of medical problems preventing decisive day to day business action, is another form of self destruction. This all too often puts otherwise profitable companies in the grave along with their founders.
The path to building a profitable home based business is too good to pass up for millions of people. When these ventures enter a realm of major success it’s hard to see the possibility of danger. Yet risks remain, regardless of profits and growth. Whether it’s compromised data, obsolescence, legal, or personal, it’s critical to always be mindful of what can bring the house crashing down.
Photo Credit: Pixabay
