How to secure your digital assets?
Today, everything that relates generally or specifically to you, your life, and your business – shall go online. This is how we are incessantly digitalizing our lives. But that does not liberate us from seeking security for our digital assets.
Any information that is saved online is your digital asset. That can be anything from your daily life pictures to your passwords, documents, etc.
Online businesses create their marketing strategy and important data such as marketing campaign essentials including advertising copies, website content, blog posts, logos, images, videos, and more, and then save it all on cloud platforms. If lost, the company would be lagging way behind its set goals.
Why securing digital assets is important?
The digitals assets contain valuable information– and things of value must be protected.
If a company or an individual does not bother to secure the digital assets, they might not be able to hand over them to the family or the deserved ones. The family would suffer unnecessary ordeal before they claim their right to these assets.
If you have your digital assets safe, you can ensure the safe monetization of these assets by selling them to a third party. For instance, you are a digital artist, and you have exquisite art pieces stored in your online Drive. You need to make them secure lest they should be stolen by some cybercriminal.
Moreover, knowing that your online valuables are protected would instill a sense of security and satisfaction. This prevents you from stressing over security concerns and rather exert your energy and utilize your time to grow your business at rocket’s speed.
How to protect the Digital Assets?
Here are a few competent ways to ensure the protection of online assets.
Make a detailed list
To start with the protection of your assets, you are required to know what you are going to protect. Many company owners or individuals do not even know what digital assets they own and what is the exact quantity of these assets. Therefore, consider anything valuable you or your company owns online and create an extensive inventory of all these valuables.
Having an inventory of your online property items would make it easier to classify them. You can then make better use of the classified inventory, such as you can proficiently figure out what asset needs to be passed on to or given access to whom or a third-party interested in making a purchase.
Get Legislation on your digital Assets
It is now possible to get legislation on your digital assets. Each state has its own specific laws regarding this, so you must reach out to an estate attorney to understand these laws and how they would work in your case. Then you can decide how you want your online assets to be treated after your death or in certain other circumstances.
Your decisions would be stated in your will and would be executed under the law. While you may have noticed that some websites already have devised the policies which allow your heirs to have access to your online accounts.
You can instruct through your will what assets would need to be shut down, what assets would be transferred to whom in your family or staff, who would be allowed access to which account or asset.
Understand the Agreements
The relationships between or among companies and employees are based on trust and transparency. But. Be under no illusion that your partners and employees or anybody who interacts with your online information can steal them.
To prevent such unwanted situation/s, a non-disclosure agreement would be a lot of help. The agreement conveys an explicit message to all the parties that any theft or damage to the digital property shall invite legal action.
Password Protection and other best practices
There are plenty of password managers you can avail of to store your passwords. These password managers allow you the freedom to access your accounts from any other device.
Besides securing the passwords, you should implement a robust security plan. You must keep your system updated. Leave nothing to chance. Train your employees to stick to the protocol such as logging out when not using the system.
Use multifactor authentication, allow limited access to relevant personnel only. Conduct audits to monitor usual or unusual activities and simulated cyber-attacks to spot vulnerabilities. Staying proactive and updated is the key rule.
Cyber insurance
No matter how much strain you take to keep your online assets safe, they are always prone to attack from hackers. If the protection methods are evolving at being efficient, the hackers are also in pursuit of devising the latest malicious trickeries.
Therefore, you must consider investing in Cyber insurance. In case of a hack or ransomware, cyber insurance can cover your monetary losses. Cyber insurance can help you get back on the recovery track faster and on to the success road.
A spare back up
Most companies nowadays stay prepared for prospective data theft by keeping an online backup system of online data. But sometimes – due to lagging behind the technological updates – you might get troubles with your online backup system as well. It only causes rise to the existing panic in such a crisis.
Therefore a double backup system is recommended. You can have an online backup and a hard drive backup as well. This may involve intricate details, but you would have an additional benefit as well.
Claim Ownership
Your posted and yet-to-be-posted items belong to you and your company only. And this is the very reason why you must get your digital assets registered. Copyrighted blogs and websites, trademarked logos and designs, and patented processes would claim your ownership to the world.
Having registered your online assets as your own would diminish the risks of getting them stolen, altered, or being used without your permission unless calling for legal action otherwise.
Conclusion
You do not have to be a cybersecurity pro to secure your online assets. You only must implement the right protection methods. You will do so if you are sufficiently concerned about your digital asset’s protection.