Top 5 things to do to protect your digital assets
When you start a new business, you spend a lot of time setting up all the new accounts you need. You buy the perfect domain name. Spend money on getting your branding professionally designed. You spend hours setting up all your social media accounts. Once all this is done it is easy to put it to one side and forget about it.
That is until something goes wrong. Let’s not wait for that to happen. Take these top 5 steps to protect your digital assets.
Your company’s digital assets can include:
- Company website, including domain name and all content.
- Social media accounts and all your posts.
- Website analytics accounts such as Google analytics
- Customer information and client lists.
- Business processes like spreadsheets or manuals.
- Photos and visuals that your company has created.
- Apps that you’ve created.
- Intellectual property like trademarks and patents.
Be sure you know who has access and to what
It is easy to get one person to set everything up and forget about it. Be sure that if one member of staff has set up all your accounts you still have access if they leave or are off sick. When people leave your organisation be sure they no longer have access to your systems while retaining access yourself.
Keep contact details up-to-date
If you change phone, email or bank be sure to update the details on all your important accounts. Password reminders and important notifications are often linked to these accounts. Not keeping them up to date could mean you miss important notifications or don’t get password reminders if your account is linked to these details
Check the registration details for your website domain name
Do you know who your domain name is registered with and when it is up for renewal? Have you checked recently that the company that registered your domain for you have up-to-date contact information for you? Are your payment details up-to-date?
It is easy to assume that someone else will tell you when your domain name is up for renewal or just that it will automatically be renewed without your intervention. If you don’t have a record of who registered your domain, or they don’t have up to date contact and payment details for you, your domain name could fail to renew. Even worse a competitor could buy it.
Store all your username and passwords securely
It is easy to allow your browser to store all your login information. Whether, to edit your website or gain access into your Google analytics account. But what happens if your computer breaks? What if member of staff leaves, and you no longer have access to everything?
Take a little time to list all the things you need login details for an be sure you know how to get into them if something serious went wrong.
On the flip side be sure these details are stored securely, to ensure confidential information is not compromised. Password storage services like Keeper and LastPass, will store all your passwords in an encrypted format, to ensure this information stays secure and easily accessible.
Keep a back-up of all your digital files and assets
Back-up your files for logos, branding and photography and then store them somewhere secure. It is all too easy to have everything on one computer and if that breaks you can lose years of photography you have paid for, expensive logo designs or other files you need to run your business.
A little time spent following these steps, will save you time and stress, while making it easier to recover if something goes wrong.
