08.05.04
Posted in Security at 12:00 am by admin
What to Ask Before You Hire Security Services for Your Business
By Gary L. Cunningham
The main reason is to stop any potential lawsuits from happening! But do you know how many individuals I have talked to about this very thing? Many! Do you know what the majority have told me? They have locks and cameras, so they don’t need anymore security than that!
This is a mess waiting to happen, the reason is as follows. This attitude is the reason things happen in business establishments that prompt major lawsuits from those that get hurt in some way while on the premises or by someone on the premises.
The reasons are as follows:
Hiring/Retention Negligence
Security Negligence
Premises Liability
Fail to Protect
Fail to Provide Security
This starts off with the very first thing you do in business, hire employees without doing background checks on them! One of the fastest ways to get sued today in business is to not check the backgrounds of employees and they turn out to be criminals! Not only can this mean they are stealing from your business, but they can also be stealing information from your clients. They may even be waiting to attack one of your clients; this is where you become liable!
Here is a list of the most viable security measures that you need to look at for your business:
Hiring & Termination Security Issues
Perimeter Security Issues
Theft/Fraud Issues
Information Theft Issues
Money Handling Issues
Access & Egress security Measures
You need to start looking at your security measures for your business now and adapt them where it is necessary to help stop any potential lawsuits from befalling you. Therefore, you have to take the list above and go through each topic to see if it actually impacts you. Then you have an idea of what to change and it should also help you as to how you should change it for the better.
If you do not feel like you can do this by yourself, then you need to hire a competent security consultant to do an assessment of your security measures. This will give you the insight needed to make decisions that will affect your business and the security measures you need to keep that business safe.
Publishing Guidelines: You are welcome to publish this article in its entirety, electronically, or in print, free of charge, as long as you include my full signature file for Ezine’s. Please send a courtesy link or email where you publish to secuone@aol.com Thank you.
“Why Business Owners Need Security”
© 2004 Gary L. Cunningham
C&M Consulting Services
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED WORLDWIDE
Gary Cunningham is a Certified Protection Officer with over 30 years experience in High Risk Security, Law Enforcement Special Operations, Specialized Training and Military Special Operations. For more information on his services to business owners, check out www.cmbizinfo.com or e-mail him at secuone@aol.com!
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Posted in Security at 12:00 am by admin
Why Hire a Security Consultant
By Gary L. Cunningham
I have often been asked, “Why should I hire a security consultant to tell me what security measures my business needs?” I guess the biggest reason is if you know little to nothing about security, then you need to hire someone that does know the ins and outs to get the most benefit!
There is a lot more than just looking at your doors, windows and locks or alarm systems to figuring out what security measures are need to protect your entire business. The main goal is to look at all your liabilities on security issues and reduce or eliminate them. This saves you time and money in the long run and keeps you out of a possible court situation in the future.
To this end, you need to do a physical site security survey. This will identify the most pressing of your security issues that can get you in trouble. By looking at the entire company, those issues can be identified, measures to protect you implemented and your liabilities reduced!
There are measures that only need to have policies and procedures changed or implemented that will reduce your liabilities. There are other measures that you will need to put in place to protect your hiring process that can save you from a lawsuit. Then there may be other measures that contain a security presence on site or after hours that will protect you.
The thing with competent security consultants is, they know what to look for when identifying security issues and they know how to deal with them with cost effective reductions/eliminations. They know what does and does not work for a variety of business types and your particular area of location.
Security measures do not mean that it has to be a major expense outlay every time. But, it can come to a major expense if you do not have the proper security measures and wind up in a court situation being sued for that reason. You may have insurance to cover it and they may not cover you if found negligent.
Then there is the bad publicity, the court time, the lawyers fees and on and on. You can see it can be very traumatic for a business owner! Especially if you lose the case and very expensive too!
So it makes sense to use a security consultant to get the best benefits you can, think of the expense as an investment for the future. It will keep you out of court, it could save you on your insurance, it will keep you out of the bad publicity limelight and it will give you piece of mind.
It is better to be prepared and not need it than to not be prepared and need it. This is true for any type of business! Stop looking at security as just an expense and look at it for what it is, an investment to protect your future!
Consultants can help you with the following issues:
Ø Negligent Hiring/Retention
Ø Premises Liability
Ø Negligent Security
Ø Hiring Contract Security Services
Ø Physical Site Security Surveys
Ø Business Espionage
Ø Fraud and Internal Thefts
Ø Disaster recovery
Ø Risk Analysis
There are many ways a consultant can protect your business. You are looking at reducing your liabilities and protecting your self, employees, assets and the facility you have. After all you have worked for a while to get where you are, would it not be silly to lose it all because you thought it was an unnecessary expense?
Publishing Guidelines: You are welcome to publish this article in its entirety, electronically, or in print, free
of charge, as long as you include my full signature file
for Ezine’s. Please send a courtesy link or email where you publish to secuone@aol.com Thank you.
“Why Hire a Security Consultant”
©2004 By Gary L. Cunningham, C.P.O.
C&M Consulting Services
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED WORLDWIDE
Gary Cunningham is a Certified Protection Officer with over 30 years experience in High Risk Security, Law Enforcement Special Operations, Specialized Training and Military Special Operations. For more information on his services to business owners, check out www.cmbizinfo.com or e-mail him at secuone@aol.com!
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Posted in Security at 12:00 am by admin
Dirty Little Computer Viruses and How To Protect Yourself
By Dan Preston
Whether you have learned your lesson from a past experience
with a nasty computer virus or have been pressing your luck
by surfing the web and downloading various files or opening
those email messages sent to you by people you don’t know
without any real understanding of just how vulnerable you
really are each time you log onto your computer you now have
the opportunity to discover what steps you can take to avoid
such an annoying and many times destructive infestation.
Listed below are some of the guidelines you can follow in
order to keep those nasty viruses from making a mess out of
your computer and your life.
•Purchase and install a well respected antivirus software
program and be sure to set it up so that it automatically
runs when the computer starts up each time.
•Make sure to keep your antivirus software up to date by
either using the automatic update feature that many come
with or make it a habit to manually check at least once or
twice a week for updates on your own.
•Set your antivirus program to scan for potential viruses
each time you open a word-processing document like the ones
that get sent through email. Viruses found in
word-processing documents are called Macro Viruses.
•When purchasing software make sure to only buy from
vendors that are well known and from ones you trust.
•Resist swapping data with the use of floppy disks or other
mobile storage devices between various computers. If
exchanging programs between computers is unavoidable just
make sure to scan the storage device(s) for viruses before
transferring data from one computer to the next.
•If using floppy disks to transfer data make sure to format
them before using them for the first time.
•Never use pirated software. This is both illegal and a
very good way to invite an unwanted computer virus.
•When downloading software from the internet do so as
little as possible. There are many neat programs available
on the internet, but unfortunately there are many viruses
that go along with them also.
•If you must download programs from the internet ALWAYS
scan them for viruses BEFORE opening them up to install on
your computer.
•Probably the most important and neglected method of
disaster recovery are periodic backups of all important
files found on your computer. Should a virus happen to get
through your lines of defense you may need to replace the
virus corrupted files with fresh ones that have been kept
for such an occasion.
Finally, it is not guaranteed that if you follow the above
steps that you will not be the victim of a computer virus,
but you can sure bet that if followed you will greatly
reduce the chance of being an unsuspecting recipient of such
an unwanted program.
Dan devotes much time working on his internet ventures.
He currently has a T-Shirt store at http://www.cafepress.com/giftsandtshirts and an ebook store at http://infoheaven-digital-books.com that caters to his visitors.
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Posted in Security at 12:00 am by admin
8 Simple Ways to Defend Against Evil Doers Both Online and Off
By Dan Preston
There once was a time when the only option people had when shopping was to either call in or snail mail in a catalog order form or to jump in the family car, fight through traffic, and wait in long checkout lines to complete the purchase.
Well, nowadays there’s still a few major mail order catalogs floating around and we all still visit our local retail outlets, but time has also introduced the internet as one of our options to shop from the comforts of home.
The internet has made shopping at home a breeze and along with it has unfortunately brought the so called ”Evil Doers” who I believe have such little happiness in their own lives that they must leech pleasure from the hardworking and innocent individuals of our wonderful and surrounding nations.
And yes, I am speaking of the ever growing problem known as Identity and Credit Card Theft.
As an online and offline consumer it is in my best interest to protect myself while at the same time wanting to help others protect themselves as well.
Below is a short yet thorough list of ways that you can follow to help yourself stay safe and be a happy consumer and keep “Evil Doers” at bay.
1) Always shred sensitive materials such as bank statements before throwing them away in the regular trash. Just because the paper documents are in the garbage doesn’t mean they are safe from peeping eyes.
2) Contact your local bank or credit card provider to request a card with a low limit. This can make you feel more at ease about shopping at those not so familiar places and can reduce the damages caused by such an ill intended individual if they get hold of your number.
Also never give out the 3-letter Card Identification Number found on the back of the credit card unless you absolutely trust the merchant you are dealing with.
3) NEVER give out your social security card number for any reason! If capable you are best to obtain a tax I.D. number from the Internal Revenue Service or local tax agency.
If any “Evil Doer” gets hold of your personal information such as home address, birth date, and Social Security Number you are at great risk of being victimized.
4) Only purchase items online through secure order pages which is typically indicated by a small, yellow, “Padlock” image usually located somewhere near the bottom of your internet browsers window.
5) If you ever receive an email asking for sensitive information and claiming to be from a company that you have an account with, NEVER supply the requested information and never click any links or hit reply to send such personal information back to the “company”.
Many legit companies will not ask for sensitive information via email.
If you get such an email you are better off to make a copy of the letter you received then close that browser window and then open a NEW window and access the company directly from their website address.
You should then submit the email you made a copy of to the company so that their anti- fraud personnel can take the necessary steps to send out warnings of possible fraudulent activity to be aware of to its members.
6) Be cautious about downloading and installing unnecessary programs onto your computer. If there are programs that you indeed must download ALWAYS scan the files for viruses and make sure that your anti-virus program is up to date.
There’s a wide variety of viruses that are distributed to unprotected computer systems and some of which are known as “Key Stroke Loggers” that record your sensitive log in names and passwords and then are made known to the trouble maker.
7) If possible try to utilize 2 different computers when using the internet.
One computer should only be used for general internet surfing just in case it was to obtain a virus such as a Key Stroke Logger so there would be little threat of someone getting your personal information.
Only use the second computer to access more sensitive information such as online banking or other important websites that require passwords and important information.
Finally, if there are young members of the family that have computer use privileges be sure to monitor and restrict the sites and programs they are allowed to use.
Many fraudulent individuals love to prey on the unexpecting and inexperienced web surfer.
In any case just be certain to contact the police or appropriate authorities the INSTANT you believe that you have become a victim of Identity Theft or Credit Card Number Theft.
The sooner you tell the authorities the better the chance they can help you recover from a financial catastrophe.
Dan devotes much time working on his internet ventures.
He currently has a T-Shirt store at http://www.cafepress.com/tshirtsngifts and an ebook store at http://online-book-store.net that caters to his visitors.
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