The assets of a company are not only limited to the company’s valuable products, machinery, property, and vehicles. The brand and big companies’ reputation is also an asset with value. Besides that, they also have some other kinds of intangible assets that cannot be measured. Those assets are sometimes more valuable for companies than money. Therefore, they need to protect those assets. Otherwise, they could face some severe consequences.

Out of all of your company’s intangible assets, you should protect your digital assets because they are more prone to be stolen. Before exploring why you need to protect your digital assets and how you can do this, let’s learn what digital assets are.

What are Digital Assets?

Digital assets of companies or brands include product images, logos, slogans, brand messages, audio, videos, and any other kind of digital content. These assets are related to the company’s identity, which they always need to protect. Using any other company’s digital identity is unethical and illegal. But these things cannot keep fraudsters and scammers away from your digital assets. They constantly search for new ways to exploit others.

That’s why you need to protect your digital assets.

Let’s see how scammers can damage your company using your digital assets.

How Scammers can Damage your Company Using Your Digital Assets?

Here is how scammers can damage your company’s reputation using your digital assets if you don’t protect them.

Defame Your Company

When you don’t protect your digital assets with a copyright license or other ways, they can be used by anyone, and you cannot even take legal actions against them. In addition, using those digital assets like your company’s logo and name, scammers can defame your company and ruin your reputation in the competitive market.

Your competitors can use your digital assets, communicate with your consumers, and spread false messages using your names. Once the damage is done, it could be hard for you to cover it up. Even you have to spend thousands of dollars to make people realize it wasn’t you. That’s why legal experts always recommend their clients and ordinary business owners protect their digital assets and don’t give an open play field to scammers.

Sell Low-quality Products Using Your Name

This scam is popular in the whole world. It is one of the easiest ways to earn money for many people. They create low-quality products that are similar to other well-known companies and sell them in the market using their names. Usually, when the name of a well-known and well-established company comes, consumers trust their products and buy them without verifying whether the actual company is selling them or some scammers are behind that. When they receive those products, they know they have been tricked.

This practice can harm companies in two ways. First, if the consumers believe that the real company has sold those products, they won’t purchase them in the future as they will start thinking that the company is now compromising on the quality. Ultimately it can harm both the reputation and the company’s sales. Secondly, if the consumers realize they are tricked by someone else, they won’t buy the company’s products even from their official outlet. It can also damage their sales.

Grab Your Consumers

Using your digital identity and assets, scammers can also grab your consumers. This trick is very common in stealing competitors’ loyal customers. Don’t let anyone use your digital assets if you want to retain your customers. Those assets can be used against you, and you will have to face legal and financial crises.

Reduce Your Sales

After reading all the damages mentioned above, you could have reached the point that your business will be affected when scammers steal your digital assets. This practice can reduce your products’ sales, and you will face a severe cut in your business revenue. So, what do you want? Start facing losses or protect your assets. The better option is to protect them from scammers.

The question is, how can you protect them?

How to Protect your Digital Assets From Scammers?

If you don’t know how can you protect your digital assets from scammers, here are some tips for you.

Use Watermarks

Watermarking is one of the best techniques that you can use to protect your digital assets, especially your documents, videos, and product images. When you watermark your photos and documents, the scammers have to spend a lot of time removing those watermarks. Those scammers who are looking for easy money usually don’t want to put effort into anything. That’s how watermarking can discourage them from using your assets.

However, while watermarking, you should ensure that the watermarks cover a considerable portion of your images or videos and documents. Those watermarks should be significant enough that if someone tries to remove them, it damages the original content. Besides that, watermarks should also indicate that you own those assets.

Secure Your Digital Assets

In addition to the watermarking method, you can also secure your digital assets using other techniques. One of the most effective techniques that you can use to protect them from scammers is getting a copyright license. Once you get a copyright license, scammers will avoid using your content as they know if they use them, they can be sued by your company. So, it is the best way to keep scammers away from your digital assets. Even if someone uses it, you can report it to the relevant authorities and file lawsuits to cover the damage.

You can also secure your assets by disabling downloading and screenshot features. This practice is also used by many companies concerned about their digital assets. You can also use this technique to protect your assets.

Locate Who Are Using your Images

If you haven’t watermarked your images and not got a copyright license, your assets are always prone to theft. That’s why you should regularly check if someone is using your images or not. The reverse photo lookup is the best for that purpose. A reliable reverse image search engine can locate all those websites and online platforms that are using your images. There are multiple image search platforms, and every platform has some exclusive strengths and weaknesses. However, you can use this utility: https://plagiarismdetector.net/image-search, this photo search facility can provide you with results of similar images from different search engines. If you find any source using your images without your permission you can reach that source with the link provided by the photo finder and ask them to remove your pictures.

Take Legal Actions

Once you utilize reverse image search engines and locate who is using your images, now is the time to take legal actions against the scammers. After taking legal measures, you should also make this new public. It can warn others who are thinking about stealing your digital assets.