You’ve poured your life into this business. You’ve invested heavily in both time and money to create something of value. Then, one day, out of the blue, it’s gone.
Your site is down, the resources don’t load or, heaven forbid, the developer just goes dark and doesn’t respond to you at all.
You have no idea where these assets are stored, much less how to fix this.
Are you prepared for this? You should be. It’s not a matter of if, but rather, when one of these scenarios will happen to you.
Be Prepared
Your website, images, PDFs, Word documents, database, custom software, and any other digital assets are the foundation you’ve built your business on. You have poured enormous amounts of time and energy into creating these materials. Have you considered the huge financial impact you will face if your digital assets are gone? You should have full control over access to these assets just like any other asset you’ve secured to build your business.
Have you considered the huge financial impact you will face if your digital assets are gone?
If you are not the administrator who controls access to your digital assets you’re at risk. A disgruntled employee or contractor could hold you hostage by refusing to give you access to your own assets. You could be at their mercy, without access to the very materials you’ve invested in to run your business. You will spend a lot of unnecessary time and money trying to regain access to materials you should already have control over.
Take Control
Do a review of all your digital assets and ensure you are in control of all of them. Your review should include your website, cloud storage, services, and software source code.
Website
Websites fall into two camps hosted website builders and self-hosted sites. Wix, Squarespace, and WordPress.com are examples of hosted website builders. The service is hosted and run by a company who provides access to a website builder you can use to create your site. A self-hosted website is a website where you have control of the server that runs your website. That server may still run WordPress, but you can log into the server and access the actual files on the server where it is hosted.
You should have access to your website as an super user. That means you should be able to login and control all aspects of setting up the website, from user management to any other settings that can be configured. If your website is self-hosted you should also have administrative access to the hosting server that will enable you to configure the server settings.
Cloud Storage
If you have files stored on a service such as AWS S3, Azure Blob, or Google Storage be sure you have administrative access to those accounts as well. These platforms provide a convenient and cost-effective way to make your files available around the world.
Services
There’s a good chance your business leverages other software services. Some examples include Asana, Monday.com, Jira, Ninety.io, Coda.io, Quickbooks, Freshbooks, Canvas, Google’s G-Suite, Office 365, etc. Regardless of what services you use, you must ensure you have administrative access over them. Even if the service is development oriented, such as Jira, BugHerd, or GitHub, you should still be the person who administers access to the service. Being the administrator of these services ensures you are in the driver’s seat and control. Leaving it up to your development partner to administer these services puts you at risk of getting locked out of critical information you use to run your business.
Source Code
If you have custom software, whether it is your website or an app you’ve had developed, your code should be stored in a software repository and you should be the administrator of it. Examples of software repositories are GitHub, Microsoft Azure DevOps, GitLab, and Bitbucket. There are many others as well.
Be sure you are the one who controls who else has access. There’s nothing wrong with giving someone else a role that allows them to create and maintain user accounts, repositories, and CI/CD pipelines on your behalf. However, they should never be the one who has the ownership of the account.
Conclusion
You have invested heavily to create your digital assets and you must ensure you have full control over them. Don’t assume your development partner has your back. Even well trusted partners with the best intentions make mistakes. Take a full inventory of digital assets you’ve created to build your business and ensure you are in control of who has access to them.
Your inventory should include:
- Website (you should have a login with super admin rights, as well as server access if it is self-hosted)
- Files and images (e.g. PDF, JPGs, PNG files)
- Custom software source code (the files used to recreate your custom software)
- Other services you use to run your business (e.g. Canvas for instructional service companies or DropBox for file storage)
Having a complete inventory of all your digital assets, along with the credentials you need to access them puts you in control. It will help ensure you are always able access of your own assets.
With your digital assets secured, you will be able to focus on building your business with the confidence and peace of mind.
Need Help?
You can take control of your digital assets. We’ll help you understand what assets you have and guide you through ensuring you are the administrator of all of them.
You will finally understand how your technology pieces fit together and support your business. You will also have confidence you are in control of your own resources. You will be able to speak confidently about your choice and describe how it provides the security and control your company needs. You will be in control.
Our No-Risk Proposition
Let’s talk. We want to hear your need and offer our advice. That’s it. There’s no cost and no further obligation. We promise.
- You schedule an appointment.
- Describe your project and ask questions.
- We share expert advice from our 35+ years of experience.
Yes, it’s really that simple.
