Why you should take DAM security seriously

23rd April 2025

A Digital Asset Management (DAM) system offers organisations a single source of truth for all of their digital assets—a repository that doesn’t just organise and store those assets, but that also facilitates third-party sharing, on-the-fly image editing and integrations with the rest of their tech stack.

However, because a DAM is so integral, ensuring DAM security is critical.

In this blog we’re going to explore why DAM security is important, the risks of an insecure system and the five security features every DAM should include.

Why DAM security is often overlooked — and why that’s a problem

When choosing a Digital Asset Management system organisations typically prioritise usability, features and price, but DAM security can take a back seat.

The security of a new system is rarely top of mind for marketing teams who are instead focused on functionality. It’s not until the selection process involves an IT team that questions around security start getting asked.

Smaller organisations are more likely to overlook the importance of secure Digital Asset Management as they often don’t have the necessary in-house expertise needed to effectively evaluate the security capability of the DAM.

This poses a big risk to SMEs, with studies showing that 43% of attacks target these organisations, while over half of small businesses go out of business within six months of a cyber attack.

The risks of insecure Digital Asset Management

As mentioned above, SMEs are particularly vulnerable to cyber attacks, with the impacts of those attacks being felt particularly acutely by small businesses. As well as the threat of going out of business completely, there are five common risks when using insecure systems and processes.

1. Loss of sensitive data—cyber attacks often target your sensitive data, particularly financial information, customer data and proprietary business information.
2. Ransomware attacks—a Ransomware attack is when your data is held ‘hostage’ by hackers until you make a payment to them. Not only is this disruptive to business operations, but these ransom demands are often very high, leading to significant revenue loss.
3. Reputational damage—if your customers’ personal data is breached it will often lead to a loss of trust in your ability to protect their data in the future.
4. Legal and regulatory consequences—your organisation may face large fines and legal penalties following a data breach, the severity of which will depend on the nature of the attack and whether or not you’d taken appropriate steps to avoid it.
5. Disruption to business operations—a cyber attack will always disrupt business operations to some extent, whether that’s as a result of a system being down for a period of time, or simply because of the time and resources needed to tackle the breach.

6 Security Capabilities Every DAM Should Include

If you’re auditing your existing DAM system, or evaluating a new one ahead of implementation, there are six Digital Asset Management security capabilities you need to be looking out for:

1. Role-based permissions and access control
2. Adherence to strict security standards
3. Antivirus software
4. Detailed digital asset analytics and reports
5. Consent management controls
6. Customisable security settings

Let’s take a look at each in more detail.

Role-based permissions & access control

The first element of effective DAM security is role-based permissions and granular access control.

The more people with access to your digital assets, and, in particular, sensitive data, the more likely it is that content will be misused, shared with the wrong person or become corrupted. This is why it’s essential to only grant access to the teams and people that need it, whether that’s to specific assets, collections or the DAM itself.

Your Digital Asset Management system is the single source of truth for all of your digital assets, but that doesn’t mean everyone in the organisation should be able to access everything. 

Multiple user privacy enables the DAM Manager to provide asset access to some users while keeping them private from others. This is ideal if you have people working on separate client accounts, or different departments or teams that only require access to the assets most relevant or appropriate to them.

In ResourceSpace you can create exclusive environments where collections of assets are separated from the central DAM and only available to certain users.

Adherence to strict security standards

It’s important that the DAM system you choose adheres to strict security standards, but how can you identify that?

ISO 27001 is the world’s best-known standard for information security management systems (ISMS) that defines requirements an ISMS must meet.

ISO 27001, which ResourceSpace is compliant with, provides companies with guidance for establishing, implementing, maintaining and continually improving an ISMS.

Antivirus software

New files are constantly being uploaded to your DAM, and just like any computer or software platform, that makes it vulnerable to viruses.

That’s why your DAM needs some sort of antivirus functionality built-in.

In the case of ResourceSpace, the antivirus plugin enables the platform to check every file uploaded for known viruses, while it can also be configured to work with any antivirus software which has a command line interface.

Detailed digital asset analytics and reports

A secure DAM system should provide analytics and reporting functionality across a variety of system actions—including viewing, editing, downloading and sharing. If the DAM Manager identifies a gap in access controls they can take steps to resolve them before a genuine security breach occurs.

Consent management controls

Managing consent and usage permissions is crucial for any organisation using assets that contain images of real people, or that have been created by third-parties. For example, you might only be able to use pictures taken by a freelance photographer for a certain time, or you might only have permission to use images for certain mediums (e.g. print or online).

In ResourceSpace, the consent plugin creates a consent record that can be linked to any asset. This makes it easy to find the consent information for each resource to ensure digital assets are not used in a way that contravenes the permissions you have for it, while sending notifications when a resource’s consent is about to expire. If that consent expires without being extended, the asset is removed from the DAM automatically.

Customisable security settings

Every organisation, and the way it works, is different, which is why it’s important that DAM security settings can be configured to suit your specific needs.

For example, you might want to customise password criteria to ensure only passwords of a specific minimum length can be used, as well as how many alphabetical, numeric or non-alphanumeric characters can be used.

As you can see in the screenshot below, with ResourceSpace you can configure your passwords on the above criteria, as well as how often they expire, how many failed login attempts per IP address or username are allowed, and more.

Single Sign-on (SSO) is another key security feature, allowing users to log into ResourceSpace with the same credentials that they use to access the devices on your organisation’s network. Combined with multi-factor authentication you can rest assured that access to your DAM is secure.

ResourceSpace is a secure Digital Asset Management system that boasts a wide range of features that will protect your digital assets from misuse and unauthorised access. 

To find out more about what makes ResourceSpace a secure DAM system that you can trust, book a free 30-minute demo below, and one of our solutions experts will walk you through all of the essential features.