Working as a digital marketer or managing a digital marketing agency has its fair share of challenges. There are various moving parts that you need to get just right in order to deliver a great return on investment (ROI) for your company and its clients.

However, the security of your digital marketing assets and company information deserves your particular attention. If these assets are lost or hacked, it could ruin your business, reducing your revenue to zero in a matter of minutes.

How to keep your digital marketing assets safe and secure

In order to protect your digital marketing assets and have peace of mind, we will discuss various tips in this article to increase your digital security. That way, your brand’s data and reputation will be protected immediately and long term. Without further ado, let’s jump in.

1. Protect intellectual property (IP) and copyrights

If you don’t go through the proper legal channels to protect your digital marketing assets, you risk costing yourself a lot of money. IP theft is common throughout the industry. Moreover, someone could take your graphs, videos, and educational materials and pass them off as their own.

To counteract this, consider hiring a lawyer who can help you copyright your material correctly and identify what to classify as intellectual property. If you simply allow others to steal your IP, when worst comes to worst, a judge could rule that you neglected to do enough to protect it.

So ensure that your hard work produces profits for your company instead of your competitors and scan the web for violations periodically. Do your best to take all the necessary steps to protect your assets if you see your content being stolen somewhere else online.

2. Secure your company’s Internet connection

Modern hackers have a variety of ways to get access to your digital marketing assets by exploiting weaknesses in your WiFi. This can wreak havoc on your business as your private trade secrets can be stolen or sold on the black market.

To prevent this breach, ensure that your firewalls and other security software programs are up to date, in addition to the operating system. This includes cloud applications.

Furthermore, an online presence is a vital part of marketing businesses today, and you need a WiFi connection for that. Therefore, implement best practices for your WiFi. For instance, keep your router in a location that is not easily accessible without proper clearance. Change your network name occasionally and use encryption for your data that passes through the router.

By taking these simple security measures, you can eliminate a lot of the loopholes that hackers use. That way, you can trust your company’s internet with your data.

3. Educate your team and limit access

Your entire team does not need to have access to each digital asset or application that you have. Limit their access only to the applications that team members absolutely need to use. You can set permissions on applications determining who can view, edit, transfer, or copy data.

In some cases, you will have remote teams. In these situations, use an encrypted password storage application so that everyone can access the software securely.

Educate your employees on how to properly manage their digital security and passwords as well. Start by implementing a policy that documents must be deleted or otherwise destroyed after being used for a project.

Moreover, educate your team members on how to deal with odd requests or emails without giving away personal or company information. That way, your entire team can work together to keep your data safe.

4. Use more secure authentication

Limiting employee access is one form of protecting your data from hackers. However, in addition, you should add another security layer in the form of two-factor authentication (2FA).

Implement other identification methods, such as a text to their cell phone or a question to which only that particular employee knows the answer. This can help prevent someone who has stolen an employee’s device or password from gaining access to your database.

You can automatically use two-factor-authentication with many platforms already created by Slack, Salesforce, Google, and more. Such authentication only takes seconds to set up and is more than worth it for keeping your assets safe.

5. Active security measures for digital data

You need to be proactive in protecting your assets by installing software that looks for data breaches. For instance, firewalls are a great server-side tool that every company should be using. Firewalls will block SQL (database) injections, which are commonly performed by hijacking your browser’s JavaScript. They also prevent traffic that is suspicious from accessing your website and other assets.

Furthermore, ensure that you have backups of all of your data. You should have physical devices or servers that contain your company’s digital assets in a secure location. This way, you are prepared to get everything up and running again if theft or power outages occur.

6. Stay compliant

One of the ways that your digital assets can be affected without you realizing it is a lack of compliance with digital asset licenses. With so many tools, it can be easy to forget to stay on top of payments, license renewals, and the like.

In addition, each piece of software that you have will have special rules as to how you are allowed to use the tool, sometimes based on the number of users you can have, etc. Ensure that you and your team are using the tools within their regulations to avoid losing access.

To solve both of these problems, create a document that details the proper usage of the tools you have for digital marketing and share it with your team. Moreover, create a schedule or spreadsheet to ensure you renew your licenses on time. The last thing you want is to lose access to valuable software when working on a campaign in crunch time.

7. Create an asset database

One way to keep your digital marketing assets safe and secure is by creating an asset database. It is likely that you don’t know where all of your digital marketing assets are, their content, or even their potential value. This is a big mistake.

Instead, create a comprehensive database so that you know all of the content that you have possession of. The list can include:

• Your website (including all of your videos, articles, and domain URLs)
• Social media account and posts
• Customer information and list of clients
• Proprietary business processes such as manuals or spreadsheets
• Assets such as photos that you have created
• Any mobile applications you have created
• Your patents and IP
• Any assets that have direct or indirect value to the organization

Even if you record assets that you don’t feel someone would steal, you will gain the benefit of knowing exactly what you have. You can also see where particular assets have been used by tracking your digital assets fully.

Keep your digital marketing assets safe and secure

As a digital marketer, your specialty is in identifying your market’s needs and matching your messaging to that. However, the best ROI in the world means nothing if your trade secrets are lost or stolen.

Don’t repeat the mistakes of many companies and let your data security go by the wayside. It could mean that you lose revenue and trust with your customers. Instead, embrace the tips above. They will help you protect your digital marketing assets so that you can continue to focus on your core competencies without fear going forward.

This guest blog post was written by Michelle Laurey works as a virtual assistant for small businesses. She loves talking business, and productivity, and share her experience with others. Outside her keyboard, she spends time with her Kindle library or binge-watching Billions. You can follow her on Twitter.