We’re Born Afraid of Two Things. Privacy and Cybersecurity Aren’t One of Them.

Researchers placed infants in a room with live snakes. The babies were completely calm, not a single one cried, and several reached out to touch them.

Why? Because humans are born with only two innate fears: loud noises and falling.

Every other fear is learned. Every other fear is learned. Think about that for a moment.

At some point, we learn to be afraid of snakes, spiders, heights or even changing the way we run our businesses.

For many small and midsize business owners, privacy and cybersecurity have become something to fear and avoid.

In business, fear rarely says, “I’m afraid.” It usually sounds more practical:

“My IT company handles cybersecurity.”

“We’re too small to worry about this.”

“We’ve always used spreadsheets.”

“I don’t know enough about privacy laws.”

“We don’t have anyone on staff who understands this stuff.”

So, doing nothing can feel safer than making a change. But familiar doesn’t always mean safe.

You Don’t Need to Be a Cybersecurity Expert

Think about the information your business has right now.

Customer names. Email addresses. Phone numbers. Employee records. Payment information. Vendor information. Passwords. Maybe even more sensitive information depending on your business.

Privacy is understanding what personal information you have, why you have it, where it goes and who can access it.

Cybersecurity is protecting that information and the computers, accounts and systems that hold it from unauthorized access, theft or attack.

You don’t need a degree in cybersecurity to understand those questions.

And you shouldn’t need one to start protecting your business.

That’s Why uRISQ Was Built

uRISQ was designed specifically with the small and midsize business market in mind.

Most SMBs don’t have a Chief Privacy Officer, cybersecurity department or large compliance team. They have people running businesses.

uRISQ helps bring privacy and cybersecurity responsibilities together in a structured, understandable way so businesses don’t have to rely entirely on disconnected spreadsheets, emails and someone’s memory.

Start With Something Simple: Your Privacy Policy

One of the easiest privacy issues for a business to get wrong is also one of the most visible: its website privacy policy.

Some businesses don’t have one at all. Others copied a generic policy years ago that no longer reflects what the business actually does.

A privacy policy may say the company doesn’t share information while its website uses third-party analytics or advertising tools. It may describe information the company doesn’t collect or fail to disclose information it does.

A privacy policy isn’t something you should simply add to your website and forget.

It should accurately explain how your business collects, uses, shares and protects personal information and reflect the privacy requirements that apply to your business.

You don’t need to solve every privacy and cybersecurity issue overnight.

Start with the basics. Make sure what you’re telling your customers about their information is actually true.