In our evolving digital world, technology has become a constant need in our daily lives. For businesses, technology allows you to connect with customers, refine your business functions, and expand your reach to new clientele.
However, with the advancements in technology, there’s the risk of cyber attacks. With the dependency on technology, hackers have taken advantage of opportunities to breach and steal your sensitive information. In 2022, data breaches and cyber attacks cost companies a total of over four million!
Today, while running a business, you should be prepared to protect not only your physical assets but your digital assets against an army of hackers. With the most effective cybersecurity measures, businesses can protect their digital assets. As you continue reading, we’ll discuss what digital assets are, why digital assets are essential, and ways you can protect your digital assets.
What are Digital Assets?
When we talk about digital assets, digital assets are anything that your company owns online. Some digital assets will be on your business’s server, while some digital assets will remain on the cloud. Digital assets include things such as images, digital content, social media, web applications, and customer databases.
Images
Any images, drawings, or photos that are created for your business and its processes are considered digital assets. These could include product-related images, picture documentation, and more.
Digital Content
Digital includes your company’s websites, which include its domain information, articles, or blogs that are on your website. It’s essential to ensure any images that you have licensed from third parties are authorized legally to ensure you remain with full ownership of your digital content. These digital assets belong to your company and should stay with your company.
Social Media
Your company’s social media, such as your posts and content within, are considered digital assets. This includes any Facebook posts, Twitter updates, and your LinkedIn account, which is also considered a digital asset.
Applications
Digital assets also include any company applications that have been developed for your business. Company applications are highly-valued and should be considered a high priority.
Customer Databases
Digital assets include customer databases such as your contact lists, contact information, email addresses, and more. If your business operates through an email database, this is also considered a digital asset.
Why are Digital Assets Important?
Digital assets are important because they add high value to your business and are valuable for investors. As a company, you can sell your digital assets independently and make tax deductions on those assets. Digital assets and physical assets are equally crucial to a company and should be protected in the same way.
Ways Your Business Can Protect Your Digital Assets With Cybersecurity Services
1. Blockchain Technology
Blockchain technology has become a new adaption from businesses when protecting their digital assets. With the use of a public ledger, this has allowed companies to reduce costs. The most significant benefit of blockchain technology is to code and decentralize, which helps your company to have complete security of your transactions and data.
Today, many small businesses and mid-sized businesses use blockchain technology to secure their transactions. Although securing these transactions provides transparency, program threats, and errors can make your company susceptible to vulnerabilities.
By establishing secure code practices, your company can ensure that your blockchain transactions remain safe. Implementing verification techniques can allow your company to protect its digital assets.
2. Powerful Access Controls
Given the increased amount of threats in today’s technology-driven world, many businesses have implemented advanced security measures to protect their digital assets. Even with these advanced measures, the risk of threats and human error remains. According to research, in 2022, more than half of companies have experienced insider threats, and that number only continues to rise.
Even with these scary statistics, your company can minimize inside threats by developing stress access controls. Strong access controls can limit your staff’s access to sensitive information, networks, and confidential information. By implementing stronger access control, your company can ensure that the right employees have the proper authorization, login credentials, and strong passwords.
3. Audit Trails
When it comes to protecting your digital assets, audit trails can shield you from vulnerabilities, risks, and internet and external threats. Audit trails will allow your company to properly monitor and track activity. Efficient audit trails will enhance your understanding of vulnerabilities, authorized users, and violations.
As a business, you must conduct audit trails regularly. No matter how much you choose to perform an audit trail, your business must stay consistent when conducting these audit trails to identify risks and make your cyber defenses stronger. With our cybersecurity services at CyberLynx, our experts can conduct network vulnerability scans to identify weaknesses and protect your digital assets.
4. Regularly Update Systems
While businesses have continued to thrive because of the advancements in technology, hackers are becoming smarter by the minute and creating new ways to gain access to networks and sensitive data. As a business, you should remain up to date with the latest security software to minimize the risks of a cyber attack.
Updates are essential to keeping your data and networks secure. If your work is cloud-based, your provider will perform regular updates and patches. These updates address vulnerabilities and how to handle cybersecurity issues. With regular updates, your business can risk being exploited by a hacker and keep your network, web applications, and sensitive data from being breached.
5. Employee Training
When operating a business, human errors are almost inevitable, but they’re one of the main reasons for cybersecurity incidents. When your employees aren’t adequately trained on cybersecurity issues, this will put your business at risk for phishing attacks, malware, adware, and more. Your employees will unknowingly fall victim to hackers and put your sensitive data at risk.
To avoid these errors, your company must conduct regular employee training about cybersecurity issues to minimize the risk of a cyber attack. When training your employees, you must make them aware of strong password usage, safe browsing habits, and safely using personal devices. In addition, you should encourage your employees to report any suspicious activity to your IT department if they receive an email that is asking for any sensitive information.
6. Maintain Regular Backups
One of the most important things your business can do to aid in the recovery process is to back up your files regularly. As a business owner, you must ensure that any sensitive data and applications remain available for all parties. If there is a cyber attack, businesses that fail to regularly back up their files will have to deal with severe damage, such as financial losses, loss of customers, and damage to their reputation.
When your business experiences severe damage from failing to back up your files, it can disrupt your daily operations and can also put you at risk of closing your business.
In addition, it is vital for small businesses, especially, to back up their files regularly on a physical device or in the cloud. Backing up your files regularly can aid in the recovery process and ensures your data stays available during emergencies.
7. Cyber Insurance Policy
Some people think that you only need to get cyber insurance for physical assets; however, you can also get cyber insurance for your digital assets. There are various reasons why you should get cyber insurance for your digital assets. When you have a cyber insurance policy, it can help cover the costs if you lose your digital assets and also help you in the recovery process.
This will make sure that your company doesn’t take on any additional costs when trying to recover your digital assets. There are many policies out on the market, but each cyber insurance policy has different coverage. When selecting the best insurance policy, ensure you’re asking detailed questions to choose one that can protect your digital assets to the fullest.
Why You Should Choose CyberLynx for Your Cybersecurity Services
In today's digital world, protecting digital assets is essential for your business to thrive. As a business, having the proper cybersecurity measures can help protect your sensitive data, keep your customers, and prevent financial losses. By staying updated with the latest threats and strategies, you can maintain the confidence of knowing your data and infrastructure are protected from hackers.
Failing to protect your digital assets can hurt the reputation of your business, which is crucial when trying to retain customers. As a business owner, you want to ensure your digital assets are protected so you can maintain and obtain more customers.
At CyberLynx, we can help your company grow faster and give you a competitive advantage by providing you with the best technology that is strategic and affordable. We can provide you with immediate support to ensure you'll never waste your time waiting on IT. We offer various services that can help protect your small business from cyber-attacks.
- “Stay in the Lane” Technology
- Intrusion Detection and Response
- Endpoint Detection and Response
- Vulnerability Scanning and Remediation
If you’re interested in cybersecurity services for your business, give us a call today.