• Physical assets such as equipment, machinery, furniture, real estate, and materials used in production must be protected with adequate insurance and regular maintenance.
• Install monitored alarm systems and other security features such as surveillance cameras, motion-sensors lights, or access control systems for offices.
• Firewalls, encryption, and two-factor authentication can help protect digital assets from cyber criminals.
• Intellectual property such as trademarks, copyrights, and patents must be secured through official channels like registering for a brand or patenting an invention with the appropriate authorities.
• Sensitive information should always be encrypted and never shared outside the company without authorized personnel’s permission.
Businesses have a lot of assets to protect—from digital property to physical assets. Therefore, you must know how to protect your business’s assets best, as it is vital to the security and continuity of your business. Here are some of the most critical assets to cover and how you can do so.
Physical Assets
Physical assets are tangible objects with some monetary value or utility to a business. This includes physical property such as equipment, machinery, furniture, real estate, and materials used in production. Physical assets can be owned by the business itself or rented from suppliers. Here are the most common physical assets in every industry and how to protect them:
Company Car
Your company car is one of the most critical assets to protect. First, ensure you have adequate insurance coverage and that the vehicle is maintained correctly. You should also consider installing window tint. The sunlight can damage the interior and exterior of your car, so tinting the windows can help protect them from fading or cracking. A local window tinting service can help you with this. They can install a film that blocks UV rays and protects your car from sun damage.
Office
Your office is another valuable asset that you need to protect. Install a monitored alarm system for your office space and consider adding additional security features such as surveillance cameras, motion-sensing lights, or access control systems. These tools can help deter intruders and keep your business safe.
Digital Assets
Digital assets include emails and documents stored on your computer networks to customer data stored in databases. These assets are growing because of the increase in cloud computing and internet-connected devices. However, data breaches are slowly increasing throughout the years, alongside cybercrime. Here are ways to protect your digital assets:
Firewalls
Firewalls are your first line of defense for digital assets. Firewalls can block malicious network traffic from entering and leaving your system, which prevents unauthorized access to data and keeps it safe from cyber criminals. Ensure you have a secure firewall to protect your business’s valuable data.
Encryption
Encryption is another valuable tool to protect your digital assets. It scrambles data so that it cannot be read by anyone who does not have the key to unlock it. This means that even if someone could access your business’s data, they would not be able to make sense of it because it is encrypted. Therefore, you should encrypt any data that you store within your system.
Two-Factor Authentication
Two-factor authentication adds an extra layer of security to your accounts. It requires two pieces of identification—such as a username and password or PIN code—to access the account. This makes it harder for hackers to access your system, as they need both credentials. There are many benefits to this kind of authentication. First, it can help prevent unauthorized access to your accounts. Second, it’s simple to do that your employees don’t need extensive training to understand it.
Intellectual Property
Intellectual property includes any original works created by an individual or business; these may consist of trademarks, copyrights, patents, trade secrets, and more which must be protected from theft or misuse by competitors or other parties who wish to gain an advantage over you in the marketplace. To protect your intellectual property rights, you must secure them through official channels like registering for a trademark or patenting an invention with the appropriate authorities.
Additionally, ensure all documents containing sensitive information are encrypted and kept away from prying eyes. Lastly, any proprietary information must never be shared outside the company without written permission from authorized personnel within the organization itself.
Protecting your business’s assets is essential if you want your business to succeed in today’s competitive marketplace. You must follow the above steps to protect your physical, digital, and intellectual assets from theft or misuse. Taking these proactive steps can help ensure that your business’s assets are secure and saved so that you can remain competitive and successful for many years.