Business asset protection refers to a range of techniques and schemes designed to protect your business from losses. These can include both physical and financial protections that allow your business to continue operating, without significant damage to its bottom line. But what, exactly, should you be doing to protect your business? Let’s take a look at these 6 practical steps.
By Team Savant
Image: Jeremy Bezanger
Sign Confidentiality Agreements
Confidentiality agreements are critical for businesses that are about to go public or are in the early stages of developing their ideas. The last thing you want is to have a breakthrough in the lab and then a member of your team selling trade secrets to a rival third party.
Confidentiality agreements provide you with a certain level of protection. If a member of your team shares your secrets with anyone, you can hold them personally liable. They may have to pay a fine or even go to prison. In some business contexts, confidentiality agreements are also called non-disclosure agreements.
Secure Your Information
In an increasingly IT-driven business environment, the value of securing your company’s information continues to rise. Firms that suffer breaches are more likely to experience damage to their brands and face criminal prosecutions.
Securing your information could mean:
Restricting access to parts of your IT network
Implementing a secure password policy
Maintaining electronic records of account access
Backing up all your data
Protecting Physical Assets
Physical asset protection is also important in a variety of contexts. Company plant and facilities face both criminal and operational risks.
To mitigate criminal enterprise, firms regularly deploy multi-point functional security systems. A combination of barriers, cameras, and motion detectors is usually enough to thwart and repel intruders.
For operational risks, warehouses and other areas where vehicles operate may require crash barrier protection. Inadvertently reversing into a wall can cause serious losses which insurers may not cover.
Incorporate Your Business
Protecting your business also means protecting yourself. You want to make sure that you define it as a separate legal entity so that if it fails, lenders can’t come for your possessions, like your house and car, if you fail to make repayments.
Put Employment Agreements In Place
Paying people cash-in-hand might work at the start of your enterprise for a day or two. But if you want to take people on longer than that and involve them more deeply in what you’re doing, you’ll need to put employment agreements in place.
Employment agreements are essential for a couple of reasons. First, they prevent employees from releasing any confidential information about your company, such as formulas or intellectual property. They also let you set out exactly what you expect from workers under the terms of their contract. This way, they can’t claim unwarranted time off.
Apply For Trademarks
Lastly, make sure that you apply for all the documentation you need for trademarks, patents, copyrights, and anything else that identifies your brand. If you fail to do this, then you could put yourself at the mercy of copycat brands, leveraging your reputation and good name.