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wbjournal.com | August 21, 2017 | Worcester Business Journal 37 10 T H I NG S I know about . . . . . . C l o s i n g d i g i t a l s e c u r i t y g a p s By Michelle Drolet Michelle Drolet is CEO of Towerwall, a data security services provider in Framingham. You may reach her at michelled@ towerwall.com. K N O W H O W Transition your small business in retirement H opefully your organization recognizes networking as an important part of relationship-building, whether with clients, prospects or partners. Good networking is the opposite of entering a room of strangers, awkwardly burdening them all with your business card and leaving. You should set goals, understand building relationships is a gradual process, and be ready to do your part. Schedule networking goals, big and small. By keeping active in the networking cycles in your area or in your industry, it keeps the chain of give-and-take moving along – the give-and-take that good relationships need. Try one or two new groups a month, if possible. "Attend every function you can that synergizes your goals and customer/prospect interac- tion," advises Entrepreneur.com. And then set goals to meet five or six new people at each event. Greet newcom- ers. Approach those you don't know. Meet, greet and let it simmer. Relationships can't be forced, says Joe Apfelbaum at BusinessInsider.com. Finding common ground is a launch point, and that may take seeing that person a few times first and asking questions. "Try to stay away from religion and politics … Do talk about sports, wine, relationships, business, cars and anything else that excites you!" he writes. Know it's not all about you. Networking and fostering relation- ships takes work, awareness and com- mon courtesy. Proactively reach out with kindness whenever you can, and when someone does the same for you, thank them publicly or via social media, to make the recognition reso- nate. "If a colleague has a new book out, I'll invite them on my podcast and tweet about it," for example, says Amanda Abella at Inc.com. "If some- one at an event has a question … I'll step in to help if I can." BY SUSAN SHALHOUB Special to the Worcester Business Journal 10 1: S t r a t e g i c n e t w o r k i n g 10) Delete old accounts. Delete accounts associated with former employees or temporary contractors; you may prefer to disable access, rather than delete accounts. 9) Monitor multiple attempts. Be vigilant for failed logins and multiple attempts to access deactivated accounts. 8) Watch the hen house. Profile user behavior so logins at odd times of the day or night, or logins from new devices, are flagged. 7) Authenticate access. Enforce multi- factor authentication wherever possible, ensure passwords and usernames are fully encrypted, and configure and authenticate centrally. 6) The bigger, the more risky. Careful account monitoring is especially important at large organizations where breaches are more than twice as likely. 5) Repeat simple steps. Take a moment to remind employees not to click on suspicious email file attachments, even if they seem to be from a family member. 4) Gap analysis. Perform gap analysis to find where employees lack the skills required to implement your cybersecurity plans and policies. You have to know where they are going wrong before you can steer things right. 3) Training to fill the gaps. Provide relevant training via outside experts, or conferences and online courses. Make learning modules bite-sized and easy to understand. They must be updated to reflect the latest threats and employees should complete them every few months. 2) Upper management most at risk. Senior management may be resistant, but they actually pose the greatest risk if a phishing attack (targeting the C-level) is successful, so they should complete the same training. 1) Put a fox in the hen house. As a way to test how porous employees can be, test staff with a fake phishing email. A bank did this after suffering a data theft, yet 20 percent of its employees clicked on the bogus email. L ike many small-business owners, you may have poured a lifetime of sweat, time and capital into building your business. You may have begun thinking about retirement, and your strategy is to sell your company for a good price, settle back and enjoy a financially secure retirement. But sometimes our assumed best-case sce- nario doesn't always happen, and many don't make any other plans. What are the odds of a person show- ing up at the right time with cash in hand to buy the company for a fair price? For thousands of small business owners each year, no one steps for- ward. Perhaps the business is too spe- cialized or is tied too closely to the owner's unique personality and skills. Or maybe possible buyers equate retirement sale with a distress sale and make only low-ball offers. Select and develop a successor. That's why it's so important to prime a replacement – someone who will buy your company when you're ready to retire. Maybe this is a current co-owner, or it's your son or daughter active in the business, or a younger key employee. Owners who successfully groom their own replacements leave nothing to chance, realizing there's no room for error at the point of retirement. Here are some steps: • Be cautious. Make sure your heir apparent is the right person in terms of temperament, personality, competence and personal goals. • Set up a probation period so you can terminate the relationship if you find this person will not work out. During that period, keep everything informal, strictly verbal. Even when you go to a formal agreement, make sure to have a termination provision. • Offer incentives to ensure your replacement stays until the baton is passed. An ambitious successor needs and deserves gradually increasing authority and benefits. Options include deferred compensation or the opportu- nity to acquire partial ownership prior to your retirement. This provides both parties with something to win by stick- ing to the agreement, and something to lose if it falls apart. • Create a buy-sell agreement. With the help of your attorney, lock in who does and gets what, spelling out all details and caveats, including how to establish the final valuation of the busi- ness. This formal agreement protects everybody. • Build in a funding mechanism. This is crucial. No matter how good the terms of the buy/sell agreement, it will be worthless if the money is not there when needed to carry out the plan. Under one option, the successor may be able to purchase the company from ongoing profits. Other options include setting up a sinking fund or allowing the successor to simply bor- row the money. These options may work, but they leave much to chance. Instead, consider a funding vehicle that protects your family in the event of your disability or premature death, such as life and disability income insurance. • Have a plan B. As a business owner, you know very few things go exactly as planned. What if your business hits tough times or your successor dies, becomes disabled, or leaves because of a personality conflict? Or what if there simply is no heir apparent waiting in the wings? Sometimes, it's simply best to dismantle the business. Whether or not you have a possible successor for your company, you should begin mapping out your retire- ment strategy today. W BY JULIANNE DAHROOGE Special to the Worcester Business Journal W W Julianne Dahrooge is a financial advisor at Chan & Dahrooge in Westborough.