The technology, policies, and level of user awareness you rely on to secure your digital assets reveal precisely where your organization is when protecting your digital assets’ confidentiality, integrity, and availability.
Since securing these assets requires you to be wary of emerging security threats, most IT departments constantly grapple with one question: “How do we keep our digital assets secure?” But this may be the wrong question.
Here’s a better one: “How do we balance the need for security with other factors like accessibility, usability, and functionality?”
Focusing on this question shifts your efforts from securing your digital assets and tailoring the security of your digital assets to your organization’s specific needs and risks.
In this article, we’ll talk about common risks that are likely to compromise your digital assets and share tips on securing them while ensuring they’re still accessible, usable, and functional.
What is digital asset security?
Digital asset security is a set of technical and procedural measures organizations take to protect their digital assets from security breaches such as unauthorized access, modification, theft, or destruction by malicious individuals.
Some of the digital assets organizations need to protect include:
- Customer records
- Financial records
- Intellectual property
- Digital currencies
- Digital documents
- Software programs
If you are not qualified to take care of digital asset security yourself, your best bet is to work a team that has the technical knowledge and experience in web development and digital strategy management, such as the B2B digital marketing agency DevriX. Keeping business data secure is among the top business priorities and taking preventive measures is essential.
Organizations rely on technical measures to protect their digital assets, including encryption and access control. In contrast, procedural measures include risk assessment and training remote employees on data handling policies to prevent breaches.
Why does digital asset security matter?
The risks associated with digital asset security lead to financial losses due to data theft or misuse. Globally, the total cost of data breaches increased by 2.6% to $ 4.35 million in 2022.
Here’s a quick breakdown of the average cost of data breaches by industry:
These costs come from lost revenue, disruption of operations due to system downtime, losing customers, and acquiring new ones. This price is always higher than the cost of retaining your existing customers.
Businesses also face legal action, so they must spend money on attorneys, pay hefty f
ines to the authorities for violating data privacy laws, and hire cybersecurity firms to investigate data breaches.
Data breaches also damage reputations, primarily when the media publicizes these incidents. 74% of consumers feel that companies collect more personal data about them than they need to.
So, when data breaches occur due to poor data management, they dent the public image of the organization in question. Customers aren’t willing to trust them with their data or their money. These costs quickly add up, prompting organizations and companies of all sizes to proactively protect their digital assets to avoid financial losses and reputational damage.
Potential security threats to your digital assets
The most common threats to digital assets fall into three categories: cyber attacks, insider threats, and physical threats.
Insider threats include data breaches by employees with access to sensitive information, while physical threats include the theft and destruction of devices storing your digital assets.
Let’s look at some common cyber attacks.
1. Social engineering
Social engineering tricks people into revealing sensitive information or doing things that compromise the security of your digital assets. Attackers relying on social engineering often use phishing, pretexting, baiting, and scare tactics to trick people into giving away confidential information or performing unwanted actions.
For example, a phishing attack occurs when a malicious actor sends you an email or message that appears to be legitimate.
In these emails, the sender asks you to provide sensitive information such as login credentials to your digital assets and sensitive information such as account numbers and credit card details, among other personal information.
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Attackers might use different tactics to appear credible and make their messages sound convincing, such as using fonts, official logos, and branding elements.
2. Malware
Malware, short for malicious software, exploits computer systems, networks, or devices. It’s used to steal sensitive data, disrupt system operations, or damage the entire computer system. Examples of malware include ransomware, trojans, spyware, and viruses.
Ransomware takes over a computer system and encrypts its files so users can’t access them—attackers behind the software demand a ransom to grant access to the encrypted email service.
Ransomware affects companies, individuals, and government agencies, leading to revenue loss and a significant interruption of operations. Here’s a breakdown of the cost of ransomware attacks:
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The sharp decline in ransom payments results from ransomware attack victims refusing to pay a ransom, as opposed to a decline in ransomware attacks.
3. Denial of service attack
This attack involves flooding a network or system with traffic, leading to overwhelm, or making it unavailable for users to access the assets they need. Denial of service attacks can also be used to damage data or prevent access to essential services.
For example, during peak shopping seasons in the ecommerce industry, such as Black Friday, a malicious denial of service attack might leave shoppers unable to access the site and, thus, unable to make purchases.
4. Zero-day attacks
Zero-day attacks happen when there is a vulnerability in software or hardware that nobody knows about. The damage can be significant if an organization isn’t prepared to respond.
This means the organization might not have any way to fight this type of attack, making it more dangerous than other types of cyber attacks. In 2017, a group of hackers leaked a cache of hacking tools and exploits used by the National Security Agency (NSA).
One exploit, “EternalBlue,” targeted a Microsoft Windows vulnerability. Because of this, attackers could run remote code on a victim’s system. The WannaCry ransomware attack was using EternalBlue in May 2017. It affected hundreds of thousands of computers in more than 150 countries. The ransomware encrypted users’ files and demanded payment for the decryption key.
Many organizations could not stop the EternalBlue exploit attack because it was a new, unknown vulnerability. Microsoft released a patch after the attack was discovered, but many systems still weren’t recovered because of delayed or incomplete patching.
How to protect your digital assets
Before you decide how to protect your digital assets, you must understand the threats they may face and how to counter them.
The most critical factors to consider when securing digital assets are confidentiality, integrity, and availability. Confidentiality involves protecting the privacy of the data stored in digital assets. Integrity involves ensuring that the data stored in digital assets is not tampered with or altered. Availability ensures that digital assets are accessible to authorized parties when needed.
Here are five ways to ensure the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of your digital assets:
1. Use strong passwords and two-factor authentication
NordPass recently released a list of 200 commonly used password combinations and the time it takes to crack them:
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Each of these passwords is easy to remember, but they also make your digital assets easy to access, compromising their security.
To avoid being an easy target by malicious actors, create strong, unique passwords for all your accounts. Additionally, it’s best to enable two-factor authentication (2FA) whenever possible. For example, instead of using “qwerty123” as your password, create a strong password using a complex combination of letters, numbers, and symbols.
If you share access to different types of digital assets within the company, use a password manager. It will grant employees access without sharing login credentials. Further, password managers suggest strong passwords for you and tell you whether the password is strong enough.
On the other hand, two-factor authentication provides an extra layer of security. Enable 2FA for your email, social media, and other accounts in the workplace. Even if you lose your password, nobody will be able to log in without additional authentication from you or your employees.
2. Keep your software up to date
Software updates often include security patches to fix vulnerabilities in the system. Update your applications, operating system, and antivirus software to ensure you have the latest protections.
Some systems, like Windows or MacOS, can automatically download and install updates.
To keep your website secure, use a reliable web hosting service that can handle lots of traffic while protecting your site. If you’re using WordPress as your CMS (or any other open-source CMS, for that matter), constantly update it to ensure your assets are safe from malicious attacks plaguing open-source software tools and their plugins.
Alternatively, consider moving to a headless CMS tool, a closed-source software that will keep your digital assets secure.
3. Develop clear internal security policies
Clear internal security policies help you govern how employees use company resources and handle sensitive information to ensure compliance. Start by understanding your risks so that you can define your security objectives.
What are the risks facing your digital assets? For example, you may want to prevent data breaches, protect confidential information, or ensure compliance with regulations.
Once you do this, create a comprehensive security policy document outlining your security objectives and the specific rules and guidelines for achieving them. This document should cover all aspects of your organization’s security.
Share your security policy document with your employees and train them on password security, data handling, and how to report security incidents. Further, regularly monitor and enforce your policies to ensure your employees follow your security guidelines. Be sure to update them as new threats emerge.
4. Encrypt your data
Encryption converts data—whether in transit or at rest—into a coded language that only authorized parties with the correct decryption key can read. You can also use encryption software to encrypt sensitive files and folders on your computer. If you send sensitive information over email, consider using an email encryption service that protects your messages from interception and snooping.
If you use cloud-based storage services like Dropbox or Google Drive, encrypt your files before uploading them. Some cloud storage services offer encryption options, which you can consider if you don’t want to use third-party encryption software.
5. Backup your data
Backing up your data is an important step in protecting it from loss or theft. When you regularly back up your data, you copy files and information to an alternative location.
Data backup is vital—it maps out how you’ll be able to recover from disasters that compromise your data. Many companies backup their data in case of software or hardware malfunctions, faulty data, hacking attempts, user errors, catastrophic events, or other unpredictable circumstances.
If a file becomes destroyed, deleted, or overwritten, backups provide a means of restoring it. For example, you can use cloud-based storage services like Google Drive, Dropbox, or iCloud to back up your files automatically. Alternatively, use an external hard drive or USB drive for regular data backups.
Conclusion
The security of digital assets is critical and demands a multifaceted approach that considers cyber risks, insider threats, and physical threats. If you’re new to digital asset security, we’ve discussed the most common threats and best practices for protecting your assets against them.
To get started, use strong passwords and two-factor authentication, encrypt your data, and back up your data to restore it in case of corruption or loss. To ensure compliance, train your employees to handle the assets they have access to and keep monitoring to ensure they implement your internal security policies.
