Five Strategies for Protecting your Online Business

Whether you're just starting an online business or have had one running for awhile, one of the most important aspects to consider is protecting your business. Since many online businesses don't have the same physical assets found in a traditional business, this is especially true for them. Often times, online businesses are more "information-based" rather than having physical inventory in a stock room somewhere. Because of that, keeping that information safe should be a primary concern as you continue to grow your online business. Here are a few common errors people make in protecting their online business.

1. Not Having Backups of Websites/Databases

As obvious as it may sound, this is one that a lot of online business owners overlook or leave in the hands of others. If you're running an online business, you're nuts if you're not keeping backups of your websites. You might be thinking that's the web hosting company's job, right? Well, yes, they provide backup services in most cases...and in most cases, can restore files with no problem. But if something happens on their end where they can't restore your files, who's to blame? Are they accountable for that? Do you really even want to have to worry about that, or would you rather have this not be an issue because you have your own backups just in case?

If your online business is making even the smallest amount of money, it just makes good sense to go the responsible route and make sure you're doing your own website backups. Don't forget to include your databases too, since these are a key component to keep many types of sites running (for instance, blogs, forums, e commerce software, etc).

You can do these backups periodically from within your control panel or by using low-cost software like CPanelSiteSaver (if you're on a CPanel server). For most people, it makes sense to have software that will automate the entire process for you. Simply save those backups to your hard drive. Then, create multiple copies and keep those backups in a safe place away from your home or office. Your hard drive doesn't count and should be a temporary holding place for the backups, not the permanent location.

2. Not Having Backups of Critical Files on Your Computer

This is right in line with the first item. Not having backups of critical files that are on your computer is another huge mistake that some online business owners make. If you're like most online business owners, you have important business-related files on your home/office computer in addition to what's on your web server. You can probably see that losing those files could become a major setback, so of course they should also be backed up to a safe location. It's relatively easy and inexpensive these days to store a large number of files on a writable CD or DVD. There are also online backup services that will backup and store your data to a secure server. That way your data is off-site in case something happens to your home/office.

3. Not Having Redundant Web Hosts, Domain Registrars, and Other Key Services

By now, you know that you should never have all of your eggs in one basket. This even applies to your online business. If you're currently using a single web host, domain registrar, or other service that represents a major piece of your business infrastructure, you might want to reconsider. It may be unlikely that one of these services will go out of business or really just mess something up, but you have to consider what would happen "if" something like that occurred, how could it be avoided, and how cost effective is that option.

4. Entrusting too Much Info to a One Outsourced Worker (Or Multiple Outsourced Workers that can Combine What They Know)

If you outsource portions of your work, one of the worst things you can do is provide too much info about how your business operates to any single vendor. Again, you want to avoid having just one outsourced worker if at all possible, and if that can't be avoided, then compartmentalize the portion of your business that this person is aware of. The same applies for groups of outsourced workers, which can be just as bad even though you're relying on more than one person in this case. You don't want that single person to become inadvertently trained on exactly how your entire business works, or for multiple people to be able to piece things together based on what each of them knows about your business.

5. Not Having Everything Documented and Accessible in Case Something Happens to You

As uncomfortable as it is to think about, you should definitely create a plan for how your business will run if something unfortunate happens to you, especially if your business is you family's primary source of income. Does your spouse know how your business works? Could it continue to run without your input? For how long? Every aspect of your business should be documented so someone else can pick up the ball and run with it in your absence. This is an ongoing process and can be a bit time consuming in the beginning, but is certainly worth it as a worst case planning scenario or in case you decide to sell your business sometime down the road.