How Secure Is Your Digital Asset Management System?

Working with a cloud-based digital asset management (DAM) solution means your entire team can connect and share the same assets from anywhere. It makes fast, efficient collaboration more straightforward and more accessible than ever and can help you do things like:

• Tracking and managing assets
• Assigning and utilizing metadata
• Formatting and customizing assets
• Searching and locating assets in moments
• Automating workflows
• Updating assets across the entire enterprise
• Integrating with other solutions

But how secure is your DAM solution? Cybersecurity has never been more critical than it is now. So many organizations use cloud-based tools to do everything, from multichannel marketing to eCommerce platforms to resource planning, customer management, user experience, and more.

And cybercriminals are paying attention. So when evaluating solutions and choosing the right cloud-based DAM platform for your company, include cybersecurity in the conversation. Instead, discover what you need to know about protecting your assets from the rising threat of attack.

Your brand’s digital assets possess inherent value – after all, you use them to promote and share your message as a company. Unfortunately, cybercriminals and other bad actors find this kind of data extremely appealing because they know how valuable it can be. That’s why you have to make an intentional effort to protect your assets and choose robust cybersecurity tools to defend against the actions of hackers and other criminals.

What are some of the risks associated with your digital assets? They include things like:

• Phishing attacks that include attempts to download malware or make their way into your DAM.
• Ransomware that holds your data and assets hostage until you pay a costly fee to access them.
• Data breaches to view, share, transmit, or sell your digital assets and other sensitive data.

It’s estimated that by the end of 2023, more than 33 billion records will be illegally obtained by malicious actors, a dramatic increase of 175 percent from the number of records stolen in 2018. And it’s not just the large companies that are at risk. Of course, large multinational corporations constantly face threats from cybercriminals. But small- and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) are also under attack.

In fact, the Internet Crime Complaint Center of the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) reported an astonishing 847,376 complaints in 2021, totaling almost $7 billion in financial losses. Their findings? Most of these complaints and attacks targeted SMBs. That’s why choosing a secure DAM solution is mission-critical to your long-term success, regardless of your company’s size.

The other issue? Working with a digital asset management solution is – by nature – deeply collaborative. That means assets are shared, edited, and used by a whole host of users within and outside your organization. So, security is even more critical for digital asset management because you must have a strategy to protect your assets even when sharing amongst many people.

Your DAM platform holds a lot of responsibility. It’s where collaboration happens—and with good reason. After all, once a digital asset leaves your DAM solution, you lose control over that asset. That means:

• Vendors, partners, and team members may wind up using an outdated asset or an asset that doesn’t fit your current brand standards.
• Marketing materials may include photos with expired digital rights, and you could have no idea and no control over this happening.
• You don’t gain access to asset metadata, which can help you track usage patterns to better understand what assets serve you the best.

A cloud-based DAM solution helps you retain control of your valuable digital assets while fostering partnerships, workflows, and collaboration from anywhere. But what about security? How well does it keep you protected? Here are factors to consider when looking for a secure cloud DAM platform.

Share Files Securely With Internal Teams and Outside Partners

Anytime you share assets with anyone, including your team, agencies, and retail and distribution partners, it is a calculated risk, especially if you’re about to launch a new campaign, service, or product. You’re juggling many things simultaneously, including embargo dates, product testing, final edits, publishing deadlines, and more.

Your DAM solution can help you track and safeguard assets with external vendors, third-party partners, and your team whenever you need to share assets without compromising your security.

Track the Usage of Your Assets

Your marketing teams need a way to analyze which assets are getting used and why. This gives you unprecedented data about which visuals offer the highest performance and how to attune your marketing strategies. In addition, your DAM system must track your digital assets once they are distributed.

Especially when dealing with things like embargo dates and related protected images, you can manage the reach of your assets, detect unauthorized usage (and potential activity from cybercriminals), and protect your brand’s intellectual property.

Monitor & Audit User Access

What happens if assets are compromised by user access or a data breach? First, you need to know the source of the leak right away to mitigate further damage. Leak detection and complete records of user access to assets are essential when content is leaked or misused.

When you choose a DAM solution that monitors and manages all access, you’ll better understand where your assets are going and who is seeing them.

Other Security Measures to Consider

Security isn’t just something you paste on top of your DAM tool—or any software solution, for that matter. Other security features to look for include:

• Strong passwords to prevent brute force attacks
• Two-factor or multi-factor authentication to keep bad actors out
• Secure application programming interfaces (APIs) connecting your DAM to your enterprise
• Encryption of data, including your digital assets

LAGO by Comosoft was developed with your security in mind; the whole idea behind a digital access management and product information management (PIM) platform is to enable secure sharing of your assets. As such, there are several security measures put in place to keep your data—and your entire brand—protected.

Security features include:

• Requiring secure passwords from all users
• Allowing for two-factor authentication (2FA) methods, including text, email verification, and authenticator applications
• Sending alerts to managers following any failed access attempts and suspicious activity
• Accessing and integrating LAGO with your existing platforms via a secure API

LAGO: Ensuring Asset Security At Every Turn

With LAGO by Comosoft, we’ve successfully completed both on-site and cloud installations of our DAM-PIM solution. Based on how most brands are working now, most of our customers are opting for a cloud-based installation to enable collaboration from anywhere.

LAGO has specific security protocols built-in to keep your assets protected. These include features like:

• Centralized and encrypted file storage
• Physical separation of database and file storage
• Distributed file storage with master and slave logic for external locations

Secure Sharing

LAGO DAM enables users to define access, visibility, and usability to restrict access to their most protected assets. So, when you share access to assets with internal users and outside vendors, you don’t have to grant them access to your entire digital asset library.

LAGO allows secure sharing by offering a wide range of restricted access to assets, which is helpful for those assets that have not yet been approved, are no longer valid, or have been limited to specific departments. Factors like validity dates can restrict the usage of a particular asset, and the visibility and editability can all be adjusted by assigning single users or user groups to an asset.

Easy, Cloud-Based Access for External Users

Some cloud file-sharing services like Google can share files via a link using different permissions, but they only include some of the metadata and other features that come with using a DAM solution.

Having all your assets stored within LAGO DAM enables external users not part of your LAGO-hosted production process to request imagery. For example, a web-based application allows users externally request access to the LAGO DAM search engine to find assets. Once a user has found assets needed for external purposes, the assets can be placed into a shopping cart for download. Users may download an original file or only a preview depending on user rights.

LAGO was designed to make every part of the production process simple, easy, and efficient—security is a huge component. We’ll preserve your brand from critical data loss and asset isolation by fostering secure collaboration from one central location your team and your third-party vendors can access from anywhere.