Advertising your online store, social media presence, website, blogs, and marketing through emails are the most crucial aspects to reach out to potential customers and generate revenue even if the business you own doesn’t rely solely on online presence.

Having a digital presence can be an immensely powerful weapon but can cause serious damages if compromised. That’s why the protection of your business’s digital presence is necessary. The steps you must take care to protect information and secure online accounts and validating the business integrity continually that you have created.

To maintain your brand when your business has doubled in digital presence you must protect your business from identity theft or copyright infringement and information theft. 

Modern entrepreneurs must be aware of cyber security and protection systems and making themselves empowered with the help of tools that will lock the information held in various platforms down to keep them safe from dishonest content creators, hackers, and their former disgruntled employees.

Don’t let your digital presence get compromised for the lack of your proactive planning because this platform gives the entire world the very first impression of your brand.

Prevention of Copyright Infringement:

Your audience will get the impression of your business from how you portray and create what you create on your social media, website, and other online platforms. Presenting a business through creating impactful content is time and money-worthy. It will show who you are and what you do. This will become the identity of the sole business. You can prevent copyright infringement by starting to brush up on the laws on copyright business, precisely in cases of electronic ownership or intellectual properties. 

It is crucial to understand your resources and rights and gather more knowledge on them because anytime a site can pop up that might sport your logo or even tagline.

When you are ready with the full knowledge of copyright laws, you must start protecting your place. You must get prepared to combat copyright infringement of your business in particularly two areas:

Business Content:

This particular type of copyright infringement involves the content you have created for your business on your site, like site images, landing pages, and logos ad taglines. Include a statement and obtain copyright documentation on your website, when possible, to protect yourself. 

Client Content:

If you are a mock-up provider or provide other deliverables to your clients, they can claim your diligent work as their own. This is how copyright infringement can occur. To prevent this, you can include statements of intellectual properties or ownership in contracts you create or place a watermark on each of the content or image you submit to your client before accepting the payment.

What should be done to avoid information theft? 

Unlike copyright breaches which may be obvious to the watchful user, information theft may occur without any noticeable site breaches. Information theft happens when data stored on a site are stolen. This includes passwords, information about the account, and a few other identifying factors.

While one can be a victim of information theft without the knowledge of their customers, it leads to the compromise of the integrity of the business. To prevent data theft, one needs to protect oneself from pharming, phishing, and other types of vulnerability by:

•  Limiting the number of administrators allowed access to accounts

•  Deleting unused accounts 

•  Being cautious of fake accounts

•  Wi-Fi networks should be adequately secured

•  Passwords should be changed or updated frequently

•  Avoiding opening of email attachments from unknown or suspicious senders

•  Using encryption on software when possible

•  Using antivirus software

Detecting information theft is a time-consuming process, hence developing a process to prevent data breaches is the best form of mitigation.

How to protect oneself from Identity Theft?

While identity theft may seem similar to information theft to the user, it results in a much more significant security breach. In addition to the accounts held by customers, Identity theft may also gain access to other accounts associated with the business. 

To protect oneself and one's customers from identity theft, two-factor authentication should be applied to all the accounts held by the business. In addition, a two-factor authentication feature should also be added for clients or customers. 

In case two-factor authentication is not possible, it should be supplemented with a strong password requirement. All users should be encouraged to create unique passwords of a minimum of eight characters which should include a combination of symbols, alphabets, and numbers.

Identity theft is also standard on social media platforms. Limiting the number of users with access to an account goes a long way to prevent data breaches. Another great way to avoid the hacking of social media accounts is to use a device or posting platform which can post content to multiple social media platforms by using a single login

Plan Ahead

It would help if you had a plan involving reaching out to customers to inform and reassure them of a data breach. Whatever data or content the unauthorized third party has claimed, you must have a counter-attack strategy to reclaim the information. Having a plan can keep one in peace while being in utter chaos to think straight and solve the problem.

Whenever a data breach takes place, your hard work, integrity, and the face of your business lay on a thin thread. Information protection and data security plans must be in your best interest in saving you from these situations by using the best technology to protect yourself in the worst-case scenario while doing business on the digital platform.

In case to gain more tips and manage the presence of your online business, you can always reach out to Build My ORM, which is the one-stop destination for handling the reputation management of businesses.