5 steps to protect your business during the festive season As a business owner, the festive season is hectic! Balancing business delivery with celebrations and festivities can be tough. Our time, money, and capacity are all limited, so none of us want to deal with something unexpected that impacts all three.

I've been thinking a lot about how most business owners have never been taught how to protect their business. Despite all of us being reliant on digital systems and devices, security training is uncompelling, unrelatable, or non-existent.

But it matters. Because when something goes wrong, it doesn't just take time away from our business. Security stress can cost us money, time, and energy. All precious resources for us as business owners. And of course, there's the added aspect that criminals don't take time off at Christmas. Whether opportunists or criminals with a target, these people make the most of the rest of us feeling frazzled so they can make their money. We all know of people affected by Black Friday scams or a Christmas hack – criminals make the most of us juggling too much at once.

So, it's time we take the steps to protect our business.

1) Track what matters - To protect our business, we first need to know what we're protecting. Our devices, our accounts, our data - all the important things that enable us to run our business. We need to know where they are, who has access, and how we've protected them. If we think about what enables us to run our business, we often start with our devices. With most of us at multiple events, travelling, and around new people over the festive period, it's best to keep track of our devices.

Here's what you should do:

• Turn on 'Find my Device'
• If in doubt, keep your devices at home / locked away

Reduce the stress and keep them protected.

2) Lock it up – Now we know what matters, it's time to lock it all down so the wrong people can't get in.

With a rise in scams over the festive period, it's particularly important to double lock our most important accounts. Things like your email and social media… the accounts that you can't run your business without, and definitely wouldn't want someone else getting into. No one wants a stranger pretending to be them and contacting their connections without permission. So, let's make it harder for criminals.

Double-locking our accounts means if someone manages to trick us into sharing our password, they can't get in straight away. There's another obstacle in the way.

Here's what you should do:

• Make sure your passwords are complex
• Turn on multi-factor authentication (MFA)

It means that if someone manages to guess your password, you're alerted (often with the location of where they are) and you can reject their access. When you're back at your desk, you can reset your password, feeling more relaxed that they haven't got in.

3) Stop and breathe – The festive season can feel chaotic at times. I know it. You know it. Criminals know it too. Which is why they try and create urgency and panic. Messages like "you missed your delivery" may normally prompt a second look, but when you're so busy, it can feel all the more tempting to click the link and to get your delivery in time. Which can enable them access into your business, your data, and your finances.

Here's what you should do:

• Stop. Breathe. Maybe even step away for a moment, if you receive an urgent message
• Come back to it when you've regulated yourself and see if the message is legitimate

The moment you take to breathe, regulate, and engage again can be the difference between letting a criminal get into your business, and your business staying protected.

4) It's time for an update – when we get to the end of the year, we all have that list of things we've been putting off that suddenly presents itself again at exactly the wrong time. In our personal lives, that might be the boiler suddenly giving out just as it's getting colder. In our business lives, this can be the updates we've been putting off for our devices and accounts, suddenly mattering a lot.

Device and account updates are more like device and account repairs. They're not a nice to have, they're a necessity. And yet most of us put them off, postponing again and again because it's just not the right time.

I hate to break it to you, there's never going to be the right time. But there's definitely a wrong time… when it's too late.

Here's what you should do:

• Turn on your automatic updates
• Make sure you've backed up your information before you do a full update - that way you're ready in case that repair doesn't go as planned.

5) Prepare for things to go wrong – Although we'd love for everything to go swimmingly, it's useful to prepare in case things go wrong. Just like if the turkey in the oven doesn't always cook as planned, it's much better to have planned in advance, than have to deal with it reactively.

Here's what you should do:

• Now you know what matters, test your backups.
• Make sure you have contact details ready for the main providers you work with in case something goes wrong.

That way you're ready, prepared, and able to protect your business and your wellbeing.

So, there were go. 5 steps to protect your business over the festive period. In following them, you'll help protect your time, your energy, and your money. It's time to protect your business, so you can keep doing what you love.