Digital asset management is an integral part of artwork approval projects. Know how your teams can share artwork files without worrying about security issues and improve team collaboration.
According to the 2019 Global State of Cybersecurity in Small and Medium-Sized Businesses, 60% of businesses have experienced losses due to sensitive data theft. 2021 Global Data Risk Report says that 33% of business data is publicly available.
When it comes to artwork development, you must collaborate with people both inside and outside the company. You need to share sensitive data with external entities such as printers and design agencies. In these cases, there is a fair risk of theft of intellectual property.
Furthermore, the efficiency of your workflow also depends on how to store and organize your files. Does your storage system come with versioning and backups? What are your recovery plans in case of any data loss? Can you revoke access after you have shared files with someone?
Here are some of the best practices when it comes to working with sensitive data during artwork development.
While there are no fool-proof solutions, you can take steps to ensure that a simple password theft or data breach does not compromise your files. Here are some things that you can do to ensure that.
When working with sensitive files, it is a good practice to encrypt them before sharing them. There are simple ways of password-protecting files, providing you with an extra layer of security.
Microsoft Office documents and PDF files have support for passwords. You can add a password to documents using Office programs or Adobe Acrobat.
This password protection provides you an extra layer of security that protects you from data breaches.
While sharing files, you have the option to give your collaborators read and write permissions. Some platforms provide more granular permissions, such as view, comment, and edit.
Providing permissions requires careful thought. Does the legal department need the write control of the file? Should the printing agency be able to comment on the documents?
These requirements vary from company to company. As a manager, you should not give any individual or group any more access than they need.
Make sure that your storage service supports file versioning. File versioning is a crucial part of digital asset management.
As designers develop the artwork file, multiple versions of the file will be created. Now, they can manually keep different versions of the file, but file organization and change tracking become chaotic. With file versioning,
Your storage system will be used by multiple collaborators. With multiple projects running, people will be working on different files at a time. This makes it difficult to see who made what changes. With audit trails, you can bring accountability to your projects. Audit trails allow you to:
With version control and audit trails, you will no longer have to worry about accidental data loss.
Most browsers now enforce the use of HTTPS. Ensure that your storage service also uses secured connections. If you are using file transfer protocol to manage files on the cloud, use the secured version or SFTP. SFTP also supports encryption, data integrity, and authenticity checks.
There are software services dedicated to storing and managing artwork assets. These come with secured cloud storage for all your assets. A proper digital asset management platform comes with
Here are a few questions that can help you decide if you really need a digital asset management platform for artwork development and approval.
If the answer to any three or more questions is an “yes”, then you should seriously consider a digital asset management platform for artwork approval.
When it comes to security, nothing beats awareness and common sense. However, some tools can simplify security for digital assets. How do you secure digital assets for your artwork projects? Let us know in the comments below.
