Content teams must juggle many projects, workflows, and processes to keep the content engine running. Meeting throughput goals and consistently creating content is at the heart of content operations. However, concerns over content asset security may be growing. In a digital environment, the risk of unauthorized access is real. So, how will you protect your assets?
In this post, we’ll review what digital content assets are, the basics of how to store them securely, and more best practices on security.
What Are Digital Content Assets?
Simply put, digital content assets are those which you store digitally. The storage of these is typically within an application on a cloud-based server. These assets also have file names and metadata that classify what they are and contain value to the company.
These assets include many digital media types — photos, videos, slide decks, sales sheets, word documents, PDFs of long-form content like ebooks, graphics, HTML files, and audio files.
Content Asset Security: The Basics
The first step to take to improve the security of content assets is using a digital asset management (DAM) platform. A DAM solution stores and organizes all your digital assets in one spot. DAM helps you manage and control access to these documents thought the content lifecycle.
Leveraging a DAM has considerable benefits for any organization. It provides a single source of truth for all content, so brand messaging is accurate and consistent. A DAM system offers version control as well.
Concerning content asset security, you can realize these advantages with DAM:
- Control who can access confidential or sensitive content with robust user roles and permissions.
- Employ two-factor authentication to keep assets safe from hackers who may steal login information.
- Improve overall security of content as opposed to using file folders in Google Drive.
These provide the foundation for enhanced protection. It also enables IT to be less involved in the management of these elements. IT teams routinely state they have too many assets to manage, with the average being 165,000. This number includes many things outside DAM but proves that IT often has bigger concerns. If you can supplement their purview with better technology, you’ll be in a better security posture.
Beyond DAM and the safety it provides, you can also enhance security with more best practices.
Content Asset Security Best Practices
You’ll want to implement these additional best practices for your organization to have confidence in the security of assets.
DAM Supports Compliance
Heavily regulated industries have parameters and regulations to meet in the content they develop and distribute. These components are critical to remaining in compliance. If these documents live in your DAM solution, you’ll find it much easier to provide an audit trail across the enterprise.
For example, the pharmaceutical industry has specific requirements around messaging and positioning. As a result, you need to ensure that content related to this agrees with those and is available to your sales team. This type of content often needs to be updated, and you can ensure that sellers have the correct version. If they don’t, it could be a security and compliance issue.
Asset Management Security and Workflows
Keeping assets secure means following the workflows of their lifecycle. Having these in place with robust security is imperative. Content workflows improve project management of each piece and keep all the confidential information within a DAM. It’s much more effective and safer than something like email chains that go back and forth between all parties.
Usually, it’s much easier to breach an email than a DAM. To mitigate the risk of such an incident, you’ll be much safer using a secure storage space that requires login details.
Security Doesn’t Mean Access Hassles
Keeping digital assets in multiple places isn’t a secure practice. It also accounts for lots of wasted time looking for these. With a DAM in place, you can enhance security and access simultaneously. DAM assets have file names that classify what they are, which allows users to search for them quickly. Since they must log into the platform, how they retrieve them is much more secure than alternatives. When developing your security protocols, make sure that safety and access are in alignment. Educating users around access and security will improve adherence.
Such streamlined access can also improve the content approval process and make it more secure. If people outside your marketing team need to review, such as legal or compliance, they’ll be able to do this within the solution, and their edits and comments remain in one place. These reviewers will appreciate the added security, too.
Intellectual Property in Your DAM: For Your and Customers’ Eyes Only
One type of content in your DAM could be decks that contain confidential information and are thus intellectual property (IP). These may be ones developed for customers or internal use. In either case, securing these assets is crucial to protecting IP. If these live in your DAM, they’ll be safer as well as easier to update.
Protecting Content Analytics and Reporting
In addition to asset security, you can protect content analytics and reporting. Ideally, the DAM would be part of a content marketing platform. When it is, you can review analytics and reporting in a safe environment, with data from multiple sources aggregated.
This type of information is confidential, and you wouldn’t want it accessible to others. This performance data informs your content strategy and direction and needs protection.
Bolster Content Asset Security with the Right Technology and Processes
The bottom line for any type of data security is having the right technology and processes. Without these as your foundation, you’ll find it much more challenging to manage security. In reviewing the options and current operations, you’ll find gaps and opportunities. To make the best decision for your organization, you’ll want to check out our guide to digital asset management. It includes insights, tips, and more!