Digital Assets You Should Protect in Your Small Business
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source: pexels.com
Digital assets are critically important to a business, regardless of its industry or type.
They’re often vulnerable to theft and unauthorized use, so protecting your digital assets should be on top of your priority list.
Having an understanding of which assets are most in need of protection is absolutely necessary for today’s online small business environment.
In this article, we’ll be touching on which digital assets you should protect.
Business Photos
Business photos and similar images are valuable assets to your small business. They are usually used for social media campaigns in order to influence buyers, either indirectly through brand awareness, or directly.
Such digital assets include:
- Infographics
- Photos that describe your business process
- Photos of your sponsored events
- Your portfolio pieces
Just about any image you’ve created as part of your business process has value, whether in terms of marketing or selling.
Because of this, stealing photos that have value and create production costs does hurt small businesses — they lose income potential and fail to get recognition for their content.
Stock photos that require a paid license in order to be used for any purpose constitute a similar example.
Business photo metadata is also a valuable asset because of the information it adds to the content. For instance, a photo can be called: “Boy petting his Stafford dog, photo, taken by Andy Weiss, April 5th, 2011.”
The keywords used in this photo provide context, make the asset searchable, and define user rights.
Therefore, business photos can be a valuable digital asset and should be protected, as part of your digital asset management strategy.
Business Websites/Blogs
Your website is essentially your place of business and a virtual counterpart to your physical store.
Therefore, it stands to reason that you should take the appropriate measures to secure your website or blog just as you would protect your physical store or office.
In the same vein, just like your office contains valuable items such as computers, copy machines, and other work equipment, your website has a multitude of valuable digital assets that need protection as well.
When we discuss the value contained on websites and blogs, we’re talking about:
- Textual content
- Website design
- Copy
- Visual content
- Website domain
- List of subscribers
All of these elements form the digital identity of your business and shape the way it comes across to customers.
Therefore, it is unsurprising that large and small businesses go to great lengths to protect their unique branding and UX design because of the value of their website and its related digital assets.
Also, it is worth noting that your website’s digital assets, such as its unique domain, can be sold.
For instance, visual content can be licensed to other businesses for a fee, and your list of customers or newsletter subscribers can be used to generate leads.
It is clear that your website or blog is an umbrella of digital assets that often carry substantial value and should therefore be protected against theft or unlicensed use.
Business Processes
The data input of any given business process is commonly listed in spreadsheets; however, they are increasingly being replaced by more sophisticated ways to manage assets.
These solutions are made to sort, arrange, and calculate volumes of data into a logical format, for the purpose of organizing your processes.
Though they vary in complexity, they are valuable business tools because of the way they accumulate and present data.
When properly sorted, the volumes of data provide organizational insight that can be used by multiple companies. Business processes also include:
- budgeting and spending
- business administrative tasks
- business data storage
- various accounting and calculating activities
For example, business processes often entail making forecasts and reports on industry trends for the sake of your business planning.
These reports are then made available to the appropriate employees in the company, and contain clusters of data that are readable at first glance when properly sorted.
Naturally, the data accumulated took countless business activities and working hours to gather, which is why it is all the more important to include it in your digital asset management strategy.
By neglecting to protect your business processes as digital assets, you risk losing your valuable data, or at the very least, full control over it.
Products in an Online Store
Physical or online, your products are at the center of your business inventory and revenue stream.
Even if you’ve stored your goods on an online retailer’s website, you still need to take care of them. This means both managing your products and their sales, and taking legal measures to take down unauthorized sellers.
Make sure you have ownership established over your products as your digital assets, especially if you’re making sales through other online retailers, such as Ebay, Amazon, Etsy, etc.
source: pexels.com
Protect your online products from any unauthorized sellers or mistreatment by other parties.
In this sense, legal agreements are important because they allow you to take action against anyone who violates your ownership rights.
For example, if anyone sells your product or features your logo on their product and packaging without permission on Amazon, you can automatically invoke US copyright law.
Additionally, registering your digital assets in the Amazon Brand Registry program gives users increased control over their products, which is critically important.
Therefore, to protect your products in an online store that you don’t own yourself, you have to get informed and employ the right brand protection strategies.
Intellectual Property
Intellectual property is, without a doubt, one of the most critical forms of digital assets you can own.
For many small businesses, the commercial exploitation of their intellectual property is a primary source of income — which is exactly why they have to be proactive in protecting it.
Knowing which set of laws protects your intellectual property is paramount for keeping it safely in your possession. In the digital realm, they are IP protection laws. Those cover:
- Patents (which in digital business appear as design and utility patents)
- Trademarks
- Copyrights
- Trade secrets
According to a report by IPEC, intellectual property theft costs US businesses between $225 and $600 every year, and it usually comes in forms of pirated software, trade secret theft, or counterfeit goods.
Since such property is often easy to steal, protecting your original works under IP law should be an absolute priority in your digital asset protection strategy.
To do that effectively, you need to know which category the digital assets of your own creation fall into.
It is also advisable to hire legal help when you handle intellectual property, despite some of the costs.
The Takeaway
In this article we’ve identified the following as valuable but vulnerable digital assets:
- Business photos
- Your business website or blog
- Business processes
- Products in an online store
- Intellectual property
Considering how important these assets are, managing them properly is key for the wellbeing of your small business.
In order for your digital assets to stay protected, it’s necessary to have a digital asset management strategy in place to protect and retain ownership of your digital assets in all situations.
However, keep in mind that there are several types of asset management strategies — all of which are crucial and deserve your full and undivided attention.
The way you manage your assets, digital or otherwise, will directly influence your revenue stream and your brand’s reputation.
Now that we’ve covered the basics, you are ready to start outlining your digital management strategy today.
