Protect Your Customers, Protect Yourself!

You've heard the term Data Breach. How can a breach affect you and your business?

Like so many things today, the adverse affects of a data breach can sneak up on you even if you are prepared. It will hit you like a lightning strike. You know that when they hit, they can be devastating but you probably don't give it much thought until you're in the middle of a storm.

Be diligent! Prepare before this storm hits because your business will be attacked in more ways than you can count.

Women and Infants Hospital  in Providence RI recently reported a data breach to 14000 patients information. Not only will the hospital be subject to Hipaa compliance regulations and fines, they will  most likely be subject to PCI-DSS fines as well. The medical industry has a double whammy if you will.

The fines alone are serious enough to put many businesses in jeopardy but what about damage to reputation and the loss of business due to customers going elsewhere, the hard costs of notifying those whose information may have been compromised and lawsuits that will surely develop.

When I googled "Women and Infants Data Breach", there was already a law firm blogging about the breach and asking potential victims to contact them if they had been damaged by it! The social media sites like LinkedIn are being utilized to promote the services data breach victims need to get remunerated. Your pockets aren't deep enough!

DATA BREACH CAN HAPPEN TO ANYBODY AND PROBABLY WILL!!!

Being aware and diligent is the best way to protect yourself. There is plenty of information available to help you. If you accept credit cards for payment through your business or practice, data breach is a real threat to you. Contact me for more information.  

I can be reached at greglaboss.com.

Greg Laboissonniere
Clearent, LLC  

The Shell Game

If you have been in business for a while you have probably seen and heard from more credit card salespeople than you care to remember and from as many or more than you ever care to hear from again! Why is that?

Because somewhere along your trail of experiences you were probably promised the moon and received far less, because you took someone at their word and were taken advantage of or more likely lied to, cheated and hoodwinked into making a bad choice. You chose the wrong shell. The wrong company. The wrong person to trust with your money!!

I equate it with the old network marketing trick of having been invited over to a good friends home for a party or get together to catch up on lost time. You show up all excited and expecting to enjoy a night out with old friends and you end up sitting through a sales presentation. It used to be known as the "Amway Party."

It was deceitful. It was hurtful. It probably breached your trust and it might have been the last time you accepted an invitation from your "good" friend. It probably soured you on ever listening to another person speak about a network marketing company EVER AGAIN! Even though there might have been a good company or opportunity you could enjoy or be successful at.

THIS IS THE MERCHANT SERVICES GAME!! The merchant services shell game. Now you see it, now you don't.

While you're busy trying to work your business and do the things you are good at which may or may not be the financial end of your business, a credit card sales guy walks through the door, catches you at a weak moment, makes a pitch that sounds great and next thing you know you've got a new processor, a promise to save $$$ hundreds per month and a 4 year lease payment of a little less than the $$$ hundreds per month on a new state of the art terminal.

3 months later you find that the company is not "saving" you as much as the sales guy promised and god forbid costing you "gulp" more, you've been charged a sizable termination fee from your previous processor and your money is now being held for days while you have outstanding bills that need to be paid now!!

You're fuming, you call the sales guy and get his voice mail and leave a highly charged message. Three days later, you realize he hasn't returned your call. You call again... and again... and...

That's it you've had enough! You call to cancel and are informed that you have another early termination fee and a NON-cancellable 4 year lease of a proprietary terminal (that means you can only use it with that company)!

Now you're thinking "What the hell did I do? How did I let this guy do this to me?" and you never want to see a "merchant service sales guy" as long as you live.

I can't tell you how many times I have seen this scenario over the last 10 or 12 years. I can however, tell you the first time I saw it happen. It happened to me! Then it happened again!! I thought I must be the world's biggest idiot to let it happen to me again.

I decided it would never happen to me again. I got into the merchant service business! I'm not telling you to leave your business and sell merchant services.

The moral of the story is to research the company and the person you are going to trust your hard earned dollars with. You've heard it said somewhere that the grass is always greener around the cesspool.

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