Gone are the days when real estate refers to just physical properties. Real estate has now expanded into the virtual world. Digital real estate, which may refer to your websites, social media profiles, branded content, or your owned software, has become so valuable that you would protect them as much as you would protect your physical possessions. One way of effectively safeguarding them is through the use of a digital asset management (DAM) system.
As you continue to increase and widen the scope of your digital footprints, it is vital that you shield them from cyber threats, data breaches, and unauthorized access. This article will help you discover ways to protect your digital empire, and discuss the important role of a digital assets management system in ensuring the security, integrity, and sustainability of your digital assets. Whether you are a domain investor, a creative professional, or a tech-savvy individual, we will provide you with the best practices in implementing DAM to safeguard your digital investments.
What is Digital Asset Management?
DAM is a system that is beneficial in organizing, storing, retrieving, and managing digital assets. Such assets are not limited to the simplest of digital file types like documents, images, and videos, but can also accommodate the more valuable ones like domains, NFTs, and digital real estate. It also has features and tools that can assist in digital assets analysis, security, version control, etc.
With the continuously evolving digital realm, it is smart to take advantage of the digital asset management system in maintaining your online real estate, especially when it comes to protecting them.
10 Best Practices for Online Real Estate Protection with DAM
The vast landscape of websites, social media profiles, and digital content holds great value. Your online real estate portfolio often translates into the brand reputation, the customer often translating directly into a brand reputation, customer loyalty, and business success. Below are the best practices for using your digital asset management system to defend your digital territory against cyber attacks and unexpected challenges.
1. Create a Digital Asset Inventory
Identify all your digital assets, including website files, social media accounts, domain names, logos, images, videos, software, and any other intellectual property. Keep a comprehensive record of their locations and access credentials. This would help you categorize your assets and assign them with relevant access permissions and security keys. You would be able to determine your most valuable digital possessions and those that can already be phased out and disposed of.
2. Implement Strong Passwords
It is important that you use unique and strong passwords for all your online accounts and assets. Although some find it easy to use the same password for multiple accounts, this should never be an option. Doing this would just weaken the fort you are building for your online real estate. Furthermore, your passwords should not be similar or related to one another, or to the asset. If so, it would be easy for hackers to crack them.
You can also consider using a password manager for securing your passwords.
3. Enable Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA)
Multi-factor authentication or MFA, is the log-in process wherein users are asked to verify their identity before they are granted access. It provides another layer of security to ensure that access to your digital real estate is authorized. Enabling MFA provides another barrier against unauthorized users who may have discovered or stolen the password.
4. Encryption for Data Protection
Encryption is a method of transforming human-readable information into random data (ciphertext). It can only be converted back to its original form once the authorized user decrypts it with a binary key or password. This is highly used for sensitive assets which are idle or in transit. By using ciphertext to hide your asset, it will be unreadable even if intercepted and accessed by unwarranted individuals. Establishing encryption algorithms and proper key management create a strong shield against breaches and unauthorized access.
5. Perform Audits and Vulnerability Assessments
Evaluate your security measures regularly to identify possible Regular security audits and vulnerability assessments are essential to identify weak spots in your digital asset management system.
Conduct audit trails. With the help of DAM’s metadata feature and analytic tools, you will be able to trace who and how your assets were used. This will help you discover unsafe user behaviors as well. By monitoring and tracking network and system activity within your DAM, spotting security vulnerabilities such as policy violations, compliance issues, and unauthorized access will be easier. Regularly perform audits and assessments for you to take action on security risks immediately. This would lessen the impact, or even avoid, cyber attacks.
6. Regularly Update your DAM
Keep your digital asset management system updated. Software updates are available for a reason. They are developed to fix bugs that may also affect the security of your DAM system. Your provider should also be constantly improving your system to catch up with the ever-changing virtual world. As a digital real estate owner, your value is dependent on your virtual possessions, it is a must that updates are done to constantly fortify your line of defense against cyber threats.
7. Backup Your Digital Assets
Although your digital asset management system is reliable, regular backup of your digital assets is also essential. An offsite location for your assets is favorable to easily restore and recover them when you face unforeseen challenges such as cyber-attacks, data loss, and software or hardware failure. Additionally, even if hackers successfully installed malware and are asking for payment, you still have a copy of your assets.
8. Limit Access to Digital Assets
Users of your digital asset system must be granted access according to their roles. Some may only be allowed to view, while others may be permitted to modify or publish. Assess the roles of your DAM users and implement user access controls to limit asset engagement only to authorized individuals. Regularly review the accessibility of your digital valuables and revoke access for those who no longer need it.
Aside from having access to your online real estate, you may also set a standard for users in creating strong passwords. Instruct them to not use their personal devices for work as well. This reduces the risk of threats, data leakage, and unauthorized changes.
9. Educate Your Team
You may have a trustworthy and loyal team behind you, but that does not mean that they are never going to make accidental mistakes. These errors often lead to cybersecurity breaches. This is the reason why you must provide them with proper training on cybersecurity. Present them with the importance of security and safe browsing practices. Teach them how to detect phishing attempts. Keep them updated with the cybersecurity trends. Empower them to become active participants in maintaining the security of your digital asset management system. Teach them about the importance of security, how to recognize phishing attempts and safe browsing practices. Initial training may not be enough. Regularly refresh them with security measures involving your digital properties.
10. Devise a Disaster Management and Recovery Plan
You must remember that handling cyber threats does not end in developing a robust protection for your online real estate. You must also anticipate potential security breaches to come up with a disaster management and recovery plan. Discuss the steps to be taken in case of unfortunate security incidents with your team. Establish protocols for containing and mitigating cyber attacks. Having a recovery plan in place minimizes the cost of time and money that would be spent in reviving your real estate.
Assuming that there would be security breaches and other cyber attacks, it is also advisable that you ask your digital asset management provider about their disaster management and recovery plans.
Conclusion
Digital asset management provides key benefits in safeguarding your online real estate. It offers a systematic asset organization and promotes team collaboration with a smooth workflow and defined accessibility while protecting your online properties and possessions against cyber threats. It assists you in establishing the right security measures that curb the misuse of your assets. Regular audits, backup strategies, and recovery plans uphold resilience against threats.
It is critical to note that cybercriminals can target businesses of any size and that no industry is immune to cyber-attacks. Because of this, whether you have a colossal or a simple virtual real estate portfolio, it is important to have safeguarding measures in place to fortify your cybersecurity, or to at least be prepared when it hits you.
However, bear in mind that you should not fully rely on digital asset management alone. This technology should also be partnered with human vigilance to detect security breaches and other cyber threats early on. DAM acts as armor, defending digital assets and preserving the integrity of your online real estate, while you and your team are the knights utilizing those armors to protect your virtual castle. In this collaborative defense, your online real estate remains secure and stands stronger than ever against the lurking eyes of digital invaders.