As a small business owners and operators, we see the need and potential in setting up and maintaining a secure business website.
In many cases, however, this just adds one more difficult task to an already overextended business owner.
Not only is design and ongoing management a time-demanding task, but for the techno-neophyte such tasks can be even more overwhelming.
An ongoing concern is there are many online threats which attach themselves to websites and from there go on to attack the visitors to your business website.
This makes your site drop in popularity and reduces consumer confidence in your service or product.
Your ranking in Google and other search engines drop due to the online threat detection and your site may be listed as a spamming or phishing website.
Search engines do this to notify the public of potential threats as no one wants to get infected by viruses and Trojans from an unsafe website.
Additionally, a Trojan or virus also often stalls up your business website, because just like a home PC being bug ridden makes things load slower or improperly.
You need business website security in order to make people feel safe and more willing to buy from you.
Keeping up with all of the new viruses and Trojans, however, is a full time job in itself, not to mention the fact that the software and programs needed to guard your website often have to be tweaked and updated.
Unless you know a lot about how to keep a website secure, it's in your best interest to hire someone to handle your security for you.
If you want something a little more budget conscious, you can have an independent contractor or virtual assistant perform a simple security assessment to check over your website and make sure that whatever system you're using is actually doing a good job of protecting your website from danger.
She or he can do periodic checks of your website to make sure that it is staying safe and to alert you to any possible dangers that you may have to watch out for or correct.
Outsourcing this full set of tasks to an independent contractor or virtual assistant can take care of keeping your business website secure for you.
An independent contractor or virtual assistant skilled in website security can find all of the best programming and software to defend your business website from viruses and Trojans.
He or she can research the newest threats coming into the Internet and how best to block them.
You can also have your assistant assess new security programs and give you a report of the best and worst ones, so you can choose one for your website.
Independent contractors or virtual assistants can also keep your website constantly updated with the best security software so that you keep up with the new viruses and Trojans instead of always being one step behind.
This means that your website will be secure and people will be more trusting of you and thus more willing to purchase from you.
The safety of your website is very important for both you and your customers.
There are a lot of viruses out there and in order to keep on top of them, you should have someone watching your back.
© JL Croto, Virtual Assistant Solutions, 2010 Reprint permission granted with all links included.