By Zeb Welborn, President & CEO, Chino Valley Chamber of Commerce

Your website, your email, your payment systems, and your customer records all bring real benefits to your business, and a few responsibilities that are easy to overlook when you are busy serving customers. The good news is that most digital risks can be reduced with a handful of low-cost habits.

We have a new resource that shows you exactly where to start. Protecting Your Business Online is a one-page guide to accessibility, security, and privacy, and it is now available to every Chino Valley Chamber member in the member portal.

What the guide covers

• Website accessibility, and the small, mostly one-time fixes that make your site work for every customer while lowering your risk of a complaint. Things like adding short descriptions to images, using strong color contrast, and making sure your site can be navigated by keyboard.
• Everyday cybersecurity, the handful of habits that stop the great majority of common problems, from multi-factor authentication and prompt software updates to backups and helping staff spot phishing emails.
• Customer privacy, and how to handle the information your customers trust you with. Collect only what you need, know where it lives, and keep your privacy policy accurate.
• What to do if you receive a demand letter, including the most important advice in the whole document: stay calm, do not ignore it, and have qualified legal counsel review it before you respond.

None of it is technical, none of it is alarmist, and almost all of it costs little or nothing to put in place. The pattern across all four areas is the same: modest, proactive steps are almost always less costly and less disruptive than responding to a lawsuit, a security incident, or a regulatory question after the fact.

How to get your copy

This guide is a member benefit, and it lives in the Resource Library inside your member portal. Here is how to get to it:

1. Go to business.chinovalleychamber.com/login and sign in with your member username and password.
2. Once you are signed in, open Resources in the left-hand menu.
3. Find Protecting Your Business Online and download the PDF.

Never set up your login, or cannot remember it? Click the “Forgot your username/password?” link on the sign-in page, or call our office at (909) 627-6177 and we will get you squared away in a couple of minutes. Every employee at a member business can have their own portal login, so if you have team members who should see this guide, we are glad to set them up too.

While you are in there, take five minutes to look around. Your portal is also where you post job openings, publish hot deals and member-to-member offers, register for events, and update the directory listing that customers see when they search for a business like yours. You can reach all of it from your phone with the MemberPlus app as well. Most members have more available to them than they realize.

Not a member yet? This is exactly the kind of thing membership is for. Call (909) 627-6177 or email zwelborn@chinovalleychamber.com and we will walk you through joining.

Why we put this together now

A few weeks ago, one of our members received a pre-litigation ADA demand letter over an issue at their physical location. When I asked our membership whether others had seen the same thing, the conversations that followed taught us something important: these claims are becoming more common across California, and they are no longer limited to storefronts. With today’s automated scanning tools, it is easy for someone to crawl thousands of business websites looking for potential accessibility issues. Some of those claims point to legitimate problems a business should fix. Others are mass-produced demand campaigns designed to pressure a business owner into a quick settlement. Either way, the letter looks the same when it lands on your desk, and the best time to prepare for it is before it arrives.

One of those conversations turned into this guide. A Chamber member with deep professional experience in cybersecurity volunteered their time to build a resource the entire business community could use, and Protecting Your Business Online is the result. Our thanks to Dazhu Consulting LLC for the time, care, and expertise behind it.

How the Chamber fits in

This guide is a good example of how the Chamber works when an issue hits our business community. We asked our members what they were seeing, so no one had to wonder if they were the only one. We connected the affected business directly with attorneys inside our own membership who handle these matters, because no member should have to shop for counsel cold. And when a member offered expertise the whole community could benefit from, we turned that offer into a resource every member business in the Chino Valley can use.

For more than 100 years, the Chino Valley Chamber of Commerce has served as a catalyst, convener, connector, and advocate for our community. Most days that looks like job fairs, ribbon cuttings, and legislative advocacy. Some days it looks like this: a member raises a hand, the Chamber brings the right people together, and the whole community ends up stronger and better prepared.

If you have received a letter

If a demand letter or pre-litigation notice has landed on your desk, do not panic and do not ignore it. Reach out to me directly at (909) 627-6177 or zwelborn@chinovalleychamber.com. Your situation stays confidential, and we will connect you with experienced attorneys in our membership who can review it and help you respond appropriately.

Sign in and grab your copy at business.chinovalleychamber.com/login. Ten minutes with this guide now could save you a very expensive headache later.

This guide and this post are provided for general educational purposes only and are not legal advice. For guidance on your specific situation, consult qualified legal counsel or a qualified technical professional.