Protecting Your Digital Business Assets

The last several years I’ve spent most of my time working with entrepreneurs helping them with their customer relationship management (crm)/marketing applications and process automations.  There were a number of years where I did a lot of web site rescues.

Often they had some problem with their sites where it had been hacked, was broken, or they just couldn’t access it.  Sometimes it was a quick fix, and I’d jump in and do my “thing” to get them operational again.  Far too many times there were issues with their hosting or they couldn’t even get access to their site.  They were stranded with a site that didn’t function, or was old and didn’t present them well, or even hacked.

The problem was, as entrepreneurs, they usually left all that technical stuff to someone they had hired at some point.  When they finally realized it wasn’t doing their business any favors, they had no idea how to get into the site or where it was hosted.  Sometimes they didn’t even own the hosting account or the domain it was on.  If they were lucky, the web site provider was still around and friendly enough.  If they weren’t lucky then it meant a bit of a battle to reclaim access to their site and worse, to their company’s domain name.

I’ll leave the challenges of picking up those pieces and restoring the site with the hosting and domain to your imagination.  Let’s just say often it wasn’t too bad, but in some cases it was a bit ugly.

That, finally, leads me to what I often talk to clients about now when I’m working with them.  Marketing usually involves setting up pages and forms on the web site so one of the things I ask for early in a project is a login to the web site.  When the client says they’ll have to talk with their web site provider or they will have to figure that out, it triggers possible red flags.  It’s then that I ask if they have their own administrator accounts for their web site, hosting, and domain registrar.  I smile when they say “Oh, yeah”.  But, that isn’t always the answer.

If the client doesn’t have administrator logins for their web site, hosting, and domain registrar then I pause the discussion on the project and discuss digital business assets.

As business owners, we all have some sense of the assets that help make our business function.  Computers, furniture, specialized equipment, vehicles, supplies, etc.. These are all physical items that helps make what we do possible.  There is also Intellectual Property.  As entrepreneurs you’ve  probably created something unique to your business that gives it that extra value.  Ideas, publications, concepts, etc… That’s the IP (Intellectual Property).  Your web site could be considered your intellectual property.   What you may not often consider as an asset are those accounts and services that you pay for that also makes your business operation possible.  I consider that digital business assets.  Assets in your business that keep your business running in some manner.

Your web site, it’s content, the hosting account or web server that serves it to people, and especially the domain name that you’ve paid for in some manner are all business assets. If you happen to lose those assets it has an impact on your business.  Your email address, and the service providing that, which you likely use to do business is also an asset.

We tend to protect our assets with security, insurance, and other tools to make sure we can recover from a loss or problem as quickly as possible.  Unfortunately, a lot of business owners haven’t considered digital business assets the same as the rest of their assets.  That has left their digital assets prone to creating disruption in their business.  Even to the point of an unrecoverable loss of those assets.

What’s important to learn from all of this, if you’re not having nightmares of unrecoverable web sites by now, is that as a business owner you’ll need to make a point of putting attention on this area in addition to all those other assets.  It’s not as daunting as it might seem.  You still don’t need to have technical expertise to protect your business.  And, you can still use the service providers you have had.  The emphasis in this area to prepare your business in the event you need to recover these assets.

Recovering these assets, being technical, is of course going to involve technical assistance just like it took technical assistance to create it.  But, don’t rely solely on some service provider to ensure you have the means to do that.  Don’t rely on your service providers to be there when something fails.  Your existing service provider may do a great job and be right on top of things.  When the problems occur is when you don’t have the authority access to assume control over your accounts when needed.  If you don’t have account logins with full authority to access, acquire, or move your assets your problems begin to create larger critical issues.

So, it’s rather simple to protect yourself when you have digital business assets.  Whenever you contract with someone to create these assets or create accounts on your behalf, Always insist that the accounts be in your business’ name and that you have the most current administrative or owner’s login and password.  Make a point with your service providers that if the logins or passwords are ever changed, that you be updated immediately.

Here are some primary areas where you’ll need to recognize these as business assets and retain control and access: