5 Ways To Protect Your Digital Assets As A Small Business Owner

Charu Sharma • August 12, 2021

Cyber attacks and data breach is a sobering reality for everyone. Even if you own a small business, protecting your digital assets is essential. You should spend a few dollars on security because if you don't, regret is the only thing that'll be left with you for the rest of your lives.



Cyber security is not limited to any industry or business size. The Verizon 2021 Data Breach Investigations Report is based on an examination of over 79,000 security incidents, including more than 5,200 confirmed data breaches. It provides us with a trove of interesting facts, such as the fact that stolen credentials were used in more than 60% of cases. So, just because you're a small business doesn't make you any less vulnerable in the eyes of hackers and data intruders. 



A University of Maryland study found that computers were attacked an average of 2,244 times per day. This means that a single computer could be attacked more than once per minute. However, this study was conducted in 2007, implying that attacks are likely far more common than this. So there is a good chance that while you are reading this blog, a hacker is attempting to gain access to your system in order to steal your digital assets. I hope we've made our point. Next up What are digital assets?


What Are Digital Assets?


Before a business owner even thinks of digital asset management or protection, the first step will be to understand what actually are digital assets? According to Wikipedia, a digital asset is anything that exists in a digital format and comes with the right to use. So, in simple words, everything ranging from your company’s website (domain name and content, everything) to social media handles and posts to spreadsheets and documents to apps to intellectual property like trademarks and patents to visuals created by your company, everything comes under the umbrella term of “Digital Assets”.


So now that we are clear with what are digital assets, let’s talk about their management and ways to protect your digital assets as a small business owner.


How To Protect Your Digital Assets?


Get The Right Insurance


When there is a cyber attack or a data breach, there are numerous financial losses. Money may have been stolen from your accounts, private information may have been leaked, or you may require the funds for further investigation; these are just a few examples. As a result, you'll need insurance to cover all of these expenses. Every day, hackers attempt millions of attacks on businesses all over the world, and that number is only increasing, putting you at a higher risk for cyberattacks than ever before.


If you are targeted, the best thing you can do is prepare ahead of time by purchasing an insurance policy that will compensate you for any losses. You should also create IT policies to protect your company from unintentionally downloading viruses or accessing websites known to contain viruses. Additionally, you should keep your systems up to date and back up all of your data. Then, devise a plan of action to be implemented in the event of a cyberattack. Cyber/Network Liability is insurance that protects the 83 million online companies exposed to security breaches (By tech startup insurance FAQ). So, if you haven’t thought about cyber Liabilities and Insurance, do get it as soon as possible.


Make Sure Your Passwords Are Hard To Crack


From 100 million passwords leaked in data breaches that year, the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) compiled its own list of the 20 most common passwords in 2019. The top 5 passwords from this list are 123456, 123456789, qwerty, password, and 1111111. Are you guys serious? How can you lock some of the most important information into a password like qwerty?


And let’s all admit that we use the same passwords for multiple accounts just because it is easy to remember! Is your private information worth nothing to you? If it is, then please start using passwords that are strong and tough to crack. Hewlett Packard enterprise suggests setting complexity requirements, such as meeting a character minimum, and use certain character types (mixed case, numerals, and special characters), and avoiding choosing previously used passwords.


Limited Access


When it comes to data breaches, employees are the low-hanging fruit. Yes, it is critical that you share the codes and passwords for documents and other assets with your employees; however, does everyone require everything? No.


According to a report, employees are responsible for 28% of all data breaches. We are not implying that this was done on purpose, but human error is a significant factor that cannot be overlooked in this case.

As a result, the best thing you can do in this situation is to create a list of employees with their names, designations, and passwords shared with them for a reason. Is it tedious? Yes. Can this, however, save your life? Also yes.


Always Use Two-Factor Authentication


2-factor authentication is something you should always opt for when creating an account anywhere; it hardly takes a minute to check the 2FA box. It is nothing more than an extra layer of protection for your digital assets. Once you've done so, you'll always have to enter a code that will be sent to your mobile device or your email, depending on the settings you've chosen.


This has two advantages: first, if a hacker tries to access your asset, you will always receive an alert that someone attempted to access your account, and second, because they will not have the code, they will be unable to enter. It applies to all accounts, from social media accounts such as Facebook to Google Drive or other cloud-based software such as Dropbox.


Use Wi-Fi Best Practices And Steer Clear Of Public Wi-Fi!


Wi-Fi is a technology that can be used to get into your system and obtain sensitive company data. There are two ways to do this: one is to utilize public Wi-Fi, and the other is to attack your company's wireless network. Always remember not to use public Wi-Fi while traveling or anyplace else in public; instead, purchase a data pack for your phone. Keep your router in a safe, restricted-access place, such as a locked cabinet or closet. Video monitoring is also a sensible security precaution.


It may seem basic, but many organizations fail to change their Wi-Fi name and password.

Update the firmware on your router, network security software, and employees' devices on a regular basis. These updates, in many situations, involve addressing security gaps, making them critical to pay attention to. Virus and intrusion protection should be installed on every computer.


Tools To Protect Digital Assets


Dignify


Market research, eBooks, training materials, modules, reports, and other private information can all be protected with Digital Rights Management. You'll be able to prevent unauthorized redistribution of your digital files and limit how your customers or recipients copy content. It allows you to control who has access to your papers and withdraw rights at any time. You can also limit forwarding and specify access expiration dates. With Digify's user analytics and activity log, you can see where and when each user visits all of your documents.


Keeper


The biggest benefit of using a password manager is that it allows you to set unique, strong passwords for each website and app you use—passwords that you don't have to remember. However, it's equally critical that you have easy access to your passwords across all of your devices. Keeper Password Manager & Digital Vault is a fantastic password manager and digital vault that works on a variety of platforms and browsers. It also has excellent features including strong multifactor authentication, good sharing capabilities, handy auditing tools, and complete password history. Keeper is a winner in the Editors' Choice category for password managers.


SeePlus


SeePlus, an ACD Systems professional asset management application, helps you regain control of your digital workflow by tracking Microsoft Office documents, PDF files, and a range of media assets. You can use this platform to manage your whole file collection from a single location.


The software enables you to establish a simplified system in which you may define the location of your files in your workflow using hierarchical keywords, ratings, dates, and categories. You can also access and backup material to your Dropbox and OneDrive accounts without having to leave the platform. This also means you won't have to go through the time-consuming procedure of uploading files to the site.


This is especially helpful for small enterprises that lack the time or manpower to keep everything in order.


DNS Protection System


The Domain Name System (DNS) translates human-readable domains into IP addresses that may be used to connect to them.

On the internet, there are many servers that run DNS. Many consumers rely on their ISP's DNS server, but they don't have to. Instead, they can utilize either a free or a commercial DNS server that is safe. DNS Protection is a fantastic way to boost security. Both commercial and home networks can benefit from DNS protection. Because many people's business and personal lives are becoming increasingly intermingled, it's critical to safeguard home networks as well. A secure DNS solution can be used to enhance BYOD policies by safeguarding data both within and outside the business and giving additional benefits.


Endpoint Security


Endpoint security is the technique of preventing hostile actors and campaigns from exploiting endpoints or entry points of end-user devices such as PCs, laptops, and mobile devices. Cybersecurity risks are protected by endpoint security solutions on a network or in the cloud. Endpoint security has progressed beyond antivirus software to complete protection against sophisticated malware and emerging zero-day threats.

Nation-states, hacktivists, organized crime, and purposeful and unintentional insider threats all pose a hazard to businesses of all sizes. Endpoint security is frequently referred to as cybersecurity's frontline, and it is one of the first places where businesses attempt to defend their networks.


Wrap Up


You must put the security of your company's critical information first. Consider this: if your company's data is lost, everything is lost. All I can say is that it is critical to protect it. I attempted to address the majority of the topics of digital asset management. If you have any additional comments, please feel free to drop a comment or join our Facebook group (link), where we discuss such topics in depth.

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Social media ROI- How to measure your social media ROI?

By Charu Sharma • January 18, 2023
What is Social Media ROI? With social media getting used as a great device in enterprises to grow, it's been more and more vital to track the effects of your social media efforts. The most pressing question now is how to comprehend the consequences of your social media strategy. Are you on the right track when it comes to your content strategy? To understand this you would want to see what is called as “Return on investment”, or ROI.It is nothing more than the returns a company would expect from the time, resources, and minds invested in the company's entire social media strategy. In terms of math, it boils down to: Revenue-Costs/Costs*100. Now imagine you were running a grocery store and you purchased the groceries for $100 and sold them for $150, then you'd get: 150-100/100*100= 50% by plugging these numbers into the formula. Isn't it easy enough? But, in terms of social media marketing, how do you apply this concept? The return on investment (ROI) on your social media campaign is the amount of money you've made.But not all social media efforts are directly attributable to monetary benefits. As a result, all marketers must be able to extract and apply relevant data, as and when required. Why is it important to measure social media ROI? It's crazy how many marketers have no idea what kind of ROI they're getting from which channel or how their social media practices are impacting their enterprise. Since every step, every effort you put into your business has repercussions, this underestimation of social media can cause havoc for your business. As a result, it's past time for you to start treating your social media sites with the respect they deserve. If you've figured out which social media activities are yielding the best results, you can start planning strategies in that direction. For example, you will discover that posting stories on Instagram or running competitions on Facebook generates more momentum on specific days, resulting in increased monetary benefits to your company; as a result, you'll know what you need to do in the future. That’s the power of studying ROI. How to measure social media ROI? Step-1 Identify your goals: Always determine the goals you want to achieve from your activities before calculating returns or even thinking about analyzing the consequences of your social media efforts. Do you want to increase your following? Do you want more people to sign up for your newsletter? Do you want to increase your sales? Following that, you should consider calculating the ROI. Step-2 Understanding marketing funnel: After you've figured out your marketing objectives, you should move on to understanding your marketing funnel. Understanding how social media metrics connect to the customer journey is a crucial first step. Engagement with the consumer, which translates to reach in social media terms, is the first step in the customer journey, as it is in the early phases. Similarly, while learning about your audience in the middle stage, it translates to CPC, or cost per click , and CTR, or click through rate . Finally, at the last stage, encouraging your audience to purchase equates to conversions like sales, subscriptions, downloads, etc. Step-3: Calculate! Now that you have targeted your KPIs and understood what to calculate, now comes the tricky part, calculating them. In order to determine your ROI, you'll need the correct tools. Many built-in technologies, such as Facebook insights, Instagram insights, and LinkedIn insights, provide granular information on how people interact with your material. With these, you can keep track of all of your engagement. You can observe when your audience is active, where they are from, what demographics they have, so on and so forth. You can check how your audience reacted to your ad using Facebook Ads Manager. Another significant tool is Google Analytics. To find out how much traffic and conversions your social media marketing efforts are producing, add Google Analytics UTM parameters to the URL of your social media ads. Why is measuring social media marketing ROI difficult? Due to a variety of factors, social media managers and executives are finding it increasingly challenging to measure social media marketing ROI. Executives are unsure about what to measure. Many people believe that if their content gets a lot of likes and shares, their strategy is good enough; however, this is not always the case. We need to see if our efforts are yielding any quantitative results. Is your product being purchased? Is the quality of your online orders improving? Is your ebook gaining popularity? Always measure all the relevant KPIs and do analysis accordingly. Wrap up: Social media marketing ROI is a parameter that should never be overlooked, if you are putting in genuine efforts in it, and want good results out of it, keep measuring and keep analyzing!

Top Restaurant Technology Trends 2023

By Charu Sharma • January 11, 2023
The year 2022 has been nothing less than a rollercoaster ride! We've been through a lo of things, experimented, struggled and got through them all. Is safe to say that we at least tried to go through all of these, whether it was inflation, supply chain challenges, or labor shortages , and guess what was constant in all of them that helped us get through? Guess what was common in all that helped us get through? It's tech! Technology has always been by our side for us to improve and get through the difficult times that we faced. And let's face it, all these issues are not going away anytime soon, hence it is important, not only for the restauranteurs, but people in every industry to be familiar with the tech trends before planning out their strategies for the next year. 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Restauranteurs should focus on taking help from in-house online ordering platforms, such as Foodkonnekt, which minimize the high margins charged by the third party delivery platforms and also enhance the customer experience. #2 Ghost/Virtual Kitchens- According to current data, meal delivery orders increased by more than 150 percent from 2019 to 2020, and UBS predicts the food delivery company to rise more than tenfold in ten years, from $35 billion to $365 billion. More restaurant operators and food entrepreneurs are turning to cloud kitchens as a feasible business solution as the demand for meal delivery develops. Restaurants rent space in virtual or "ghost kitchens," which are centrally located, licensed commercial food production facilities, to create menu items that are best for delivery. They are essentially kitchens without a dining area; food is only prepared for delivery. Under one roof, a single restaurant may manage multiple brands or virtual eateries, or the kitchen may serve as an incubator for other suppliers. As the demand for meal delivery grows every day, many restaurateurs have turned it into full-fledged businesses, and this trend appears to be continuing into the next year. The market for ghost kitchens is anticipated to reach $1.05 billion in value by 2023. #3- Loyalty programs- The next trend that we'd like to discuss is the technology that goes into establishing and implementing loyalty programs. We are all aware that the oncoming recession will make life more difficult in the following year. Consumers are spending less and less on products they don't necessarily use in their daily lives as costs rise. As a result, as a restaurant owner, you must choose how to optimize revenues despite the possibility of a recession. And here is when a loyalty program comes into play. In monetary terms, it is a well-known fact, and all marketers emphasize it, that new clients are more difficult to target than regulars. The cost of acquiring new consumers is significantly more than the cost of retaining existing customers. As a result, now is the ideal time to target your loyal customers. And that can be easily done with a proper loyalty program in place. Freekwent is a digital loyalty program that we at mKonnekt operate for our clients across several locations. It is an excellent approach to treat your regulars to fresh deals and discounts that you may choose to run. In these difficult times, it will help you retain those extra dollars. #4- Automated Inventory Software Management System- The marketplace is getting more competitive. Those who identify present demands and react accordingly will thrive in the long run. The world is becoming more frantic and digitally dependent. Customers want better efficiency, prompt service, and high-quality products. An automated inventory system is a modern solution to the myriad challenges associated with human inventory systems. Because inventory systems are automated, they are more efficient and straightforward to administer, allowing management to manage activities more effectively and at a faster pace. It helps restaurants manage their ingredient purchase orders, stock levels, menu, and recipes expenses. The best inventory management software systems for restaurants integrate with or are built into point-of-sale (POS) systems, minimizing administrative time. These services cost between $99 and $129 per month. Some tools, on the other hand, are free and have limited functionality. Furthermore, to enhance restaurant operations, says Dirk Izzo, President and General Manager of NCR Hospitality, they are using data for more accurate forecasts. #5- Restaurant Marketing Automation and Smart Tech- Customers and restaurant businesses are embracing AI, from robots that flip hamburgers and make salads to those that handle order taking. McDonald's acquired AI company Dynamic Yield in 2019 with the goal of enhancing the customer experience at drive-thrus with the help of the business' automated personalization offering. The menu choices are shown according to the time of day, the weather, the volume of customers dining now, and what's trending on the website. Additionally, it makes meal suggestions based on the decisions each customer makes. The need for third-party delivery services increased as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, which forced individuals to remain at home. Although companies like UberEATS and DoorDash have adapted to the challenge, restaurants still have a chance to enhance delivery even further. So this is the food part of AI. There is a much more pressing need, and we are already seeing the increasing likeability on the marketing front of the restaurant industry as well. Everything is now digital. And there are numerous ways for customers to interact with a business. Everything from social media to chatbots to websites. And all of these contacts are a direct source of what we refer to as "first party customer data." This data is a gold mine, if you ask us. An astute marketer can do so much with this information. And this is where technology and analytics come into play, which will be a clear and prominent trend in the coming year. For example, in order to conduct a successful email campaign, order data can be segmented so that targeted messages can be sent to consumers who haven't ordered in a specified length of time, say three months, and another section can be developed for people who are regulars. We have a team of incredibly smart marketers here at mKonnekt ; contact us if you want to see the mKonnekt magic! Wrap up- Those who are in tune with changing conditions are the clear winners in any industry. Here, we addressed the biggest restaurant innovations that will come to power in the following year, so get ready!

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By Charu Sharma • November 29, 2022
Guess what any social media manager or content creator would say if you asked them today, for the key to growing your Instagram? You guessed it right! Instagram Reels. Creating and posting reels on Instagram is the secret sauce to increase your reach and engagement massively. If your social media and content strategy doesn't have reels in it, you are missing something very important. For one of our pizza franchise clients, we at mKonnekt started making and posting reels four times per week, and one of the restaurants witnessed an of increase of 1100% in IG reach and 1300% increase in engagement. Therefore, we will wish to preach what we do! Now, many people who want to boost their Instagram handle as novices find it quite challenging. Small business owners, personal brands, and everyone else may have difficulty developing an Instagram content strategy. Because, trust us, growing Instagram is no stroll in the park. We are here to save the day. We have come up with what you might refer to as a comprehensive guide or solutions to the top and most often asked questions about Instagram reels. Without further ado, let's go! Table Of Contents Q.1 What are Instagram reels? Q.2 How to make and post an Instagram reel? Q.3 What are some tips to make my reel viral? Q.4 What is the best time to post an Instagram reel? Q.5 How to track the top most important metrics? What Are Instagram Reels? Reels are brief, video-style pieces of content that may be produced to engage with your audience, grab their attention while educating them about your company story, and also be used to draw in potential customers. You can leverage reels to make entertaining videos to share on Instagram with your 15-second multi-clip films can be recorded and edited using new artistic tools, audio, and effects. Reels can be shared on Feed with your followers, and if your account is public, a new section under Explore will allow users from all around Instagram to access them. This wonderful video feature is accessible in the US and 50 other nations. On August 5, 2020, Instagram unveiled this fantastic feature. You can read the official announcement here . Instagram Reels have been a fantastic tool for brands and companies to exercise their creative muscles and provide a visual experience beyond a grid post ever since they were first introduced. How To Make And Post An Instagram Reel? Step 1- Open your IG profile’s homepage or what we also call as feed, and navigate to the top right hand corner. You will find a “plus” icon, beside the messages/DMs’ button. Another option is to click on the “Reels” icon, situated in the middle of the five buttons at the very end of the page. Both options will take you to the same interface. 
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