Protecting Your Online Content
by Danny Brown on February 12th, 2008
With the rise in business use of the Internet, it’s no surprise that so many businesses are using it to promote their services or products. For small businesses in particular, the Internet offers an inexpensive and far-reaching opportunity to start and grow a successful business.
However, with anything that has a good side, there’s always a flipside. Online content is king, and many online business owners are investing a lot of time and money into the content they put on their websites, including articles, promotional content, and product descriptions. However, thanks to the continuous growth in online piracy, the threat of content being stolen is a very real one, and one that shows no signs of abating anytime soon.
Although you might think of the music industry when you hear the phrase online piracy, it’s far more serious than this. Some of the things that piracy can affect when it comes to the business world include:
* Intellectual Property, or IP
* Documents
* Brands
* Logos
* Online copy
* Company databases
As you can see from the list, there’s a lot that can be stolen from you. Imagine if you’ve worked years to establish your brand, and overnight it disappears? You can see the potential for catastrophic results, from which you might never recover. So how can you protect your business?
The best way is to employ a specialist Internet security team. The experts at these companies have years of experience in combating online piracy. They can develop special firewalls and network security systems that will ensure pirates or hackers can’t break into your company website and steal or destroy important information. Although nothing is ever 100% safe, using specialist companies can offer you the fullest protection possible.
Make sure you’re using secure servers as well. This is where your website and information on it is protected by an encrypted password system. If your website is run by the same company that hosts it, make sure they have this service in place. This should be pretty much par for the course now for web hosting companies, but make sure yours offers it anyway.
If you don’t have the financial backing to hire a professional company, there are options you can put in place yourself. Although you can’t keep your site completely content-free, you can limit some types of content – for example, if you’re a digital photograph company, only put up some samples of your work, and make sure your photos are watermarked. If you publish articles on your site, you can set up Google alerts whenever the specific titles of those articles are mentioned online. This will allow you to check up on who is publishing your content without permission. Additionally, if you’re running your own site, change the password for access frequently, and limit the people who have access to it.
Although online piracy is as big a threat to business as it is to the music and film industry, you can give yourself a better chance of protecting your company. It’s always best to pay for the best security options you can afford – a short term cost may end up saving you a much bigger amount in the long run.
