Protecting Your Digital Assets: Outsourcing Vs. In-House
Today, many companies understand the importance of securing their digital resources. Your business can outsource digital asset management services if you lack expertise in this area. In this case, you may consider IT support in Toronto from Fusion or other reputable companies. This approach allows you to access advanced security measures and round-the-clock monitoring and protection from experts.
On the other hand, some businesses prefer to manage and protect their digital assets in-house. This is ideal for companies with dedicated team members specializing in digital asset management. Also, note that an in-house system requires investing in infrastructure, software, training for your technical team, and other resources.
As an entrepreneur, you own various valuable assets. Some are physical, like computers, vehicles, machinery, equipment, and cash. These are easier to protect by keeping them in a secure room, using video surveillance, limiting access, employing guards, and installing locks.
On the other hand, there are intangible assets. These include logos, applications, customer databases, social media accounts, videos, photos, documents, or illustrations that exist in digital form. You store them on your computers, servers, online, or in the cloud.
Some businesses may prioritize security for physical assets and overlook the protection of digital resources. However, it’s critical to protect digital assets against cybersecurity threats. In case of an attack, you risk financial loss, reputational damage, and lawsuits.
Ways To Protect Your Digital Assets
Whether you opt for in-house or outsourced digital asset management, here are the ways to safeguard your digital assets.
Identify Your Vulnerabilities
Staying on top of your cybersecurity is essential to protect your digital assets. As technology advances, hackers employ more sophisticated means to find and explore vulnerabilities in a company’s systems, networks, software, and hardware. Thus, cybersecurity practices that were robust a while back may not be adequate to keep your digital resources safe today.
To protect your assets better, you must first identify your venture’s vulnerabilities. You can employ cyber security threat hunting services in this case. Cybersecurity specialists can reduce the risk of cyberattacks by identifying malicious software, activities, and individuals. They can then implement effective measures to protect your digital assets.
Additional steps include updating your anti-malware and anti-virus, upgrading software and hardware, and making your team members aware of cybersecurity best practices.
Perform Audit Trails
Audit trails are critical because they help identify risky behavior. They allow you to monitor and track network and system activity. Additionally, you can examine and establish security vulnerabilities, policy violations, compliance concerns, and unauthorized access. Therefore, audit trails are indispensable in safeguarding your digital assets.
Enterprises may conduct audit trails annually, semiannually, quarterly, or monthly. You should perform these regularly, regardless of your venture’s size or type. While smaller companies may be perceived as easier targets due to less stringent security measures, it’s critical to note that cybercriminals can target businesses of any size. Also, no industry is immune to cyber-attacks.
Limit Access To Digital Assets
Another way to protect your digital assets is by restricting access. It’s critical to ensure that only authorized team members can open or use your corporate files, photos, and customer databases. Also, access privileges should be revoked permanently if the team member leaves the company.
You can further enhance digital asset protection by ensuring authorized users adhere to security best practices. For instance, they should have strong passwords and not use personal devices for work. User authentication is also vital when accessing valuable digital resources.
Limiting access can help reduce the risks of data loss, theft, misuse, or alteration. In addition, it will be easier to identify the source of a breach.
Back Up Your Digital Assets
Storing your digital assets in different locations is also a security measure you may consider. To ensure the safety of your data, implementing additional security measures is crucial. One effective solution is having access to 24/7 responsive IT services, such as leading IT support for businesses in Chicago, or data backup services, such as NAKIVO Backup & Replication, which can offer prompt and reliable enterprise backup solution, including NAKIVO backup for Hyper-V, VMWare and AWS EC2 environments. You can quickly recover the original copies if some resources are maliciously or erroneously deleted or changed.
Furthermore, if a hacker has successfully installed malware and they’re demanding payment, you won’t be at a disadvantage because you have a backup of the compromised digital assets elsewhere.
You should back up your resources regularly. The frequency will depend on the type of data and your company’s requirements. For some businesses, it’s prudent to back up at least once daily and to have at least three copies of digital assets. Storage options include external storage devices or the cloud.
Final Thoughts
As you prioritize security for your tangible assets, you should do the same for digital resources. You can secure your photos, logos, files, customer databases, and other online assets by staying on top of your cybersecurity and performing audit trails. Backing up your digital assets and limiting access to these resources can also help.
Digital asset protection is essential, no matter the type or size of your business. It’s best to safeguard these resources proactively to avoid lawsuits, reputational damage, and financial loss.
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