In today’s digital age, securing your company’s valuable digital assets should be at the top of your to-do list.
Surprisingly, one-third of digital folders in a company remain unprotected, and 96% of workstations have insufficient backup.
No wonder many businesses have lost their confidential digital assets in the past year due to risky sharing methods such as email, USB drives, and shared drives.
With digital asset management (DAM) software, businesses can now centralize all their assets in one location – helping them curb their ever growing content chaos and manage their assets in a much more organized way.
But when it comes to efficiently leveraging DAM systems – managing user permissions and access control is crucial for ensuring asset and content protection.
Not only does establishing roles and permissions early on in the process help reduce time to market. It also adds an extra layer of security by avoiding copyright infringement and false claims.
In this article, we’ll explore the best practices for managing user permissions for both internal and external users, including typical DAM users and their permissions.
By following these practices, your business can protect its critical assets while complying with corporate policies and regulatory requirements.
What are DAM user permissions?
DAM in itself is all about keeping your digital content organized and secure.
While your organization might have the best and the biggest amount of digital assets – in most cases, not every employee or stakeholder needs access to all of them.
Adding on to this: Some of your content may have specific copyright restrictions or are super client-specific, which means you need to keep them protected at all times.
That’s where DAM permissions management comes into play.
Permissions allow you to control which assets specific users within a DAM system can access and in what ways they can use them. With the right permission structure in place, your DAM system runs much more smoothly, and users can easily access the digital assets they need.
Which then means you can keep your digital assets safe and secure knowing that only the authorized users have access to them.
The result?
The ability to prevent any legal troubles and minimize the risk of losing digital assets to unlucky mistakes.
Two typical DAM users: General users and administrators
So who are the most common users of your DAM? We can break them up into two groups: Administrators and general users.
Administrators
DAM systems can be a powerful tool for managing your digital assets, but it’s important to understand the roles and responsibilities that come with using them in practice.
DAM administrators are responsible for ensuring the system runs smoothly and that everyone has the right access to the right assets (at the right time).
Administrators represent a smaller group of individuals who are responsible for managing the system and its assets.
So who can be an administrator?
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The role can be filled by a variety of individuals, such as:
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A social media manager who handles all the images and videos that go up on a company’s social channels
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A CMO who oversees the organization’s brand guidelines and ensures consistency across all assets
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A graphic designer who creates templates and assets for other team members to use, or
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A creative director who manages the creative workflow for an agency and makes sure the right assets get to the right people.
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When setting up administrator permissions, it’s important to think about all the different settings you’ll need to consider.
For instance, you’ll need to decide whether the administrator will be able to add, delete, or edit user permissions and whether they can create, delete, or move folders or single assets.
Additionally and lastly, it’s important to determine whether they can manage file versions and whether they can access and change the metadata taxonomy set-up.
General users
Your DAM system is designed to make it easy for your general users to find the assets they need to do what they do best – distributing them to customers or stakeholders.
These users make up the most of your user base, and they typically search for and download assets such as photos, videos, PDFs and other files.
Your efforts in implementing your DAM system in the best way should prioritize the needs of these users.
So to ensure that your general users can easily find what they need, you’ll probably find yourself implementing restrictions on what they can download, edit, share and distribute.
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These users may include employees within your organization or on the outside. For example:
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Graphic designers looking for images to use in their designs
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Web developers searching for photos and videos to use on your website
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Sales representatives who need access to product information and brochures
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Customer support representatives who require easy access to frequently asked questions and other support materials.
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Managing internal user permissions
When it comes to the people who will be dealing with the company’s content internally, it’s a pretty diverse group of people.
We’re talking marketing and PR employees, sales teams, design creatives, product managers, social media and web teams, customer support teams or research and development teams.
Which calls for a great, organized permissions structure in place.
5 best practices when managing internal user permissions
Here are a few best practice tips on managing your internal DAM user permissions.
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Set up relevant permissions based on company role: A good best practice in order to manage digital assets effectively is to spend time identifying the roles that need access – and assign permissions accordingly. For instance, marketers and creatives may require different levels of access depending on what they need to get done. DAM also lets you hide files and folders from certain users, making it easy to manage large quantities of digital assets and ensuring their correct use.
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Organize permissions in a hierarchy: To protect sensitive content, it’s crucial that you set up a hierarchy of permissions that restricts access. Some users are then only able to view and download assets, while others are able to edit or delete where they see fit.
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Set up approval workflows: Sensitive content requires careful internal management. With DAM, you can create custom automated workflows to approve download or sharing requests and ensure that only approved brand assets are published on the channels of your liking.
When the content is no longer needed, you can easily set up expiration dates to control their presence in the system and either remove them completely, or archive them.
This best practice also highly improves your content lifecycle management.
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Keep the number of administrators to a minimum: Easily minimize risks by limiting administrative access to your DAM system. Keep the number of administrators low to prevent potential misuse of content, whether that be intentional or accidental.
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Use substantial passwords: To keep your digital assets safe, make sure users create strong passwords and change them often (perhaps quarterly or even more consistent than that). Our top tip is to use at least ten characters with numbers, letters and symbols. DAM tools like Digizuite offer strong password protection and two-factor authentication for added security. You can easily limit access based on location, role and department.
Managing external user permissions
There are a variety of external users who may access your content, and they come from a wide range of backgrounds and industries:
> Freelance writers or editors
> Event planners or coordinators
> Distributors or resellers
> Suppliers or manufacturers
> Partners or affiliates
> Investors or shareholders
5 best practices when managing external user permissions
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Define external user groups: Identify the various categories of external stakeholders that need swift and easy access to your DAM. These may include customers, collaborators, end-sellers or suppliers – all depending on your industry or company. Create user clusters for each group and give them the right privileges depending on their specific requirements for access.
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Create brand portals: Consider setting up a special portal for external users that only allows access to what they need. This helps prevent accidental leaks of sensitive digital assets that you don’t want just anyone getting their hands on. With DAM, you can easily set up a brand portal with the necessary assets like logos or product images for stakeholders like retailers, making it easy to share just what they need.
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Be extra cautious: When giving external users access to your assets, use secure methods like password-protected links or Single-Sign-On. SSO lets users log in securely without sharing their credentials with other systems in the mix.
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Think ahead and set expiration dates: DAM makes managing rights easy by adding expiry dates and usage rights to individual files, ensuring a consistent brand experience. When an asset expires, anyone downloading it will be notified, and admins can retire it to avoid any kind of confusion.
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Keep an eye out: Monitor external DAM users’ activity within the system to ensure they only access authorized digital assets. Always be on the lookout for any suspicious activity or attempts to view any really restricted content you might have.
Content analytics in a DAM can help you analyze the performance of your digital assets, such as downloads and shares, and provide insights into how people search for assets. Which can further allow you to optimize your content and tailor your strategy.
Conclusion
Managing your DAM user permissions in the best way possible is key if you want your digital assets to remain protected.
Both your basic users and administrators should be able to confidently navigate through the DAM knowing that only authorized users can access company logos, documents and files.
In this article, we outlined six best practices when it comes to managing both internal and external user permissions.
Our best practice tips when it comes to managing internal user permissions are:
1. Assign relevant permissions based on internal roles
2. Use a permission hierarchy
3. Set up workflows for approval
4. Audit permissions regularly
5. Limit the number of administrators
6. Use strong passwords
Our best practice tips when it comes to managing external user permissions are:
1. Define external user groups
2. Create a separate access portal
3. Be careful how you share
4. Think ahead and set expiration dates
5. Keep an eye out
6. Conduct regular audits
Interested in learning more about how you can enhance your content security with Digizuite DAM? Book a demo with us here.
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