UK small businesses face more uncertainty than ever before. The Federation of Small Businesses recently reported that two in five SMEs were losing sales due to the cost of living - whilst also navigating the highest interest rates in 15 years.

Yet, adding to this is the looming uncertainty of businesses’ own security posture. In an increasingly digital world, the risk of cyberattacks pose a very real threat to companies of all sizes. Some 39 percent of UK businesses experienced a cyberattack in the past 12 months, according to a recent UK government survey.

A disrupted supply chain, cyberattack, or data violation can hurt an organisation’s reputation and revenue. For small companies this can prove devastating. Furthermore, the changing regulatory landscape around compliance with data privacy leaves many businesses running blind, despite trust in their operations being a valuable commodity in its own right.

Solid security and compliance capabilities are foundational to providing strong data privacy, and for minimising the risks and administration of managing subject requests and changing regulations. But how can businesses meet compliance requirements and demonstrate a strong security posture, without further stretching budgets and resources?

Compliance: a double-edged sword

Privacy laws such as GDPR are designed to support consumers with control over their data. However, for businesses this means gauging consent for data access and sharing, the definitions of data, subject access and deletion procedures, and the complexities of sharing data, considered akin to monetising it. They must also understand how partners, vendors, and employees manage this data.

This presents particular challenges to companies operating in modern, cloud computing environments where data is readily shared around an ecosystem and applies to most small businesses who favour software-on-demand business models, allowing them to scale capacity with their growth.

All this, on top of running the day to day, means small businesses have a lot to contend with. Yet, no matter the size of your business, the need to comply with regulation is crucial.

More than ever, customers are looking for reassurance that they can trust the companies they are engaging with. Therefore, compliance isn’t a tick-box exercise, it is a clear demonstration of a strong security posture and a company that can be trusted to protect its customer data.

What small businesses really need are capabilities to manage security and compliance without overstretching their teams. This includes continuous and autonomous monitoring of their security and compliance posture, real-time alerts, and advice helping them remediate issues before they turn into incidents.

Managing the legalities of compliance is hard. Policy templates can translate business practices into formal, easy-to-track policies that ensure teams stay compliant.

In addition, managing employee training and education is a chore that many put on the backburner. Automation that supports all the above, plus training and on- and off-boarding, ensures that security is maintained over time for busy SMEs. All this is becoming more available in conjunction with security tools, too.

Managing security and compliance as ‘trust’

To respond to these needs, small businesses must build transparency and compliance into their operations to maintain stakeholder trust. Make cybersecurity the cornerstone of the data policy. Ideally, instil ISO 27001 as a gold standard for information security management, and SOC 2 as the go-to security framework for SaaS companies.

This requires a holistic, strategic approach to demonstrating security, combining best practice with the best in cybersecurity and compliance technology. When successful, it massively reduces business risk and aids proving trust and selling to larger, compliance-oriented firms.

Data regulatory compliance is complex, and small businesses ideally want to use specialist compliance software to mitigate dynamic data privacy risks without wasting their staff time on admin and repeatedly proving their security to big customers. Trust management software supports cybersecurity and revenue growth with efficiencies and risk minimisation.

By centralising, streamlining, and automating compliance, trust management platforms enable small businesses to focus on getting their products to market and finding customers — not tedious, but vital, admin.

Strengthen, de-risk, remove friction

Such risk-management steps support business efficiencies. According to McKinsey, a well-executed, end-to-end risk-function can decrease costs by up to 20 percent while improving transparency, accountability, and employee and customer experience.

A strong security posture and regulatory compliance decreases business risk, streamlines operations and saves staff time and money on the bottom line. It also demonstrates a trusted status to sales prospects and partners.

In this tough landscape, small businesses can put transparency and compliance at their heart to support sales and maintain stakeholder trust to win new business. If they can do this, they will inspire consumer confidence, create the right foundation to innovate safely, and empower their customer success.

Paulo Rodriguez is Head of International at leading trust management platform Vanta