When you’re working with a Virtual Assistant or any other freelancer, you often need to give them access to sensitive or valuable business information. Therefore, it’s important that you do what you can to safeguard yourself. Here are 4 areas to consider, and some ideas on how you can safeguard your business and working with a Virtual Assistant safely.
Trust
Being able to trust the Virtual Assistant you work with is incredibly important. While you can (and should) take steps to avoid sharing passwords, credit cards and other valuable information, if you don’t trust the Virtual Assistant you work with it will limit their effectiveness. So it’s worth taking all the time you need to find a Virtual Assistant that not only has the skills you need but also feels right for you. Otherwise, no matter how much you want to get the best out of working with a Virtual Assistant, you’ll always find it just doesn’t quite work the way you wanted.
Sharing passwords
Use a password program such as LastPass or Dashlane or any of the other password managers. Make sure that whatever you use will let you share access to certain passwords with your Virtual Assistant. It’s also important to make sure that you have administrator access to everything you use. Even if you get your Virtual Assistant to set up access to programs for you, you still need to make sure that you can access everything and remove your Virtual Assistants access to everything if you stop working together.
Payment information
There’s a good chance you’ll occasionally want your Virtual Assistant to purchase things on your behalf. While you can share your credit card and PayPal details with your Virtual Assistant, there are other ways around the issue. For example, both LastPass and Dashlane allow you to store your payment details. Then you can share them with your Virtual Assistant rather than give out credit card or PayPal details.
Database security
Your database is something else you should be wary of sharing indiscriminately. It’s one of the most valuable things your business has and the wrong people could do all sorts of damage to it, and to your reputation. How would your business cope if your database was corrupted? Or worse, deleted? Do you have a backup, or do you just trust your software and staff? What if your contacts were harvested and sold to spam providers? Keeping access to your database local means that users are acting under the same legal requirements, and if the worst happens would be much easier to prosecute.
Here are some other articles I’ve written in the past that also cover aspects of working with a Virtual Assistant safely:
- Why It’s Important To Find A Virtual Assistant You Trust
- Staying Safe When Working With A Virtual Assistant
- 5 Tips For Working Safely With A Virtual Assistant
- Who Has Your Data? Why You Should Work With A Local Virtual Assistant
- 5 Reasons To Choose A Local Virtual Assistant
- Choosing a Virtual Assistant: personality vs experience