Keep data breaches at bay: secure digital catalog sharing options

Last updated: 2nd December

For businesses handling sensitive content, secure digital catalog sharing has become more essential than ever. Data breaches pose significant risks, from financial losses to damaged reputations, making security solutions essential. 

Any content shared online faces the risk of unauthorized access, duplication, or distribution threats. These can significantly impact your business operations and reputation. To counter-charge these risks, businesses require secure sharing solutions to ensure their digital catalogs remain entirely under their control, minimizing the possibility of exposure to unwanted audiences.

But here is some good news for any business in the manufacturing, retail, or wholesale industries. Digital flipbooks come with a series of features that have different ways of securing any type of digital content you implement in your marketing strategy. Think of PDFs, but more interactive and much more secure to share online. Gone are the days when your budgets, stakeholders’ reports, or top-secret product enhancements were at risk of ending up in the wrong hands. With digital flipbooks’ secure sharing options, you ensure that nobody who doesn’t have access to your digital content.

The need for secure digital catalog sharing

One of the biggest risks for any type of digital content sharing is potential data breaches. These pose significant threats to businesses due to all the types of private information that can be shared between companies and stakeholders or between companies and their customers. Cyber attacks have increased in frequency, and hackers no longer limit their assaults on government agencies, banks, and such. 

Understanding the risks

Nowadays, any company can become a target, from small distributors of homemade products to global corporations. Unauthorized access to private information is protected in parts of the world by GDPR compliance requirements, but someone who wants to access restricted information is unlikely to be stopped by that. This is where attack surface management becomes crucial, helping organizations identify and secure all potential entry points for cyber threats. Data theft also has a severe impact on a company’s trustworthiness. Either of these breaches can lead to severe consequences like financial losses, reputational damage, and, of course, legal troubles. If someone’s personal information gets into the wrong hands because you couldn’t ensure their protection at any stage of the transaction, you are legally culpable and may be held responsible in court.

Importance of security

Businesses that deal with sensitive information or, in particular, trade secrets require a high level of security for any content shared digitally. While the leak of personal information from various individuals, either within the company or who are handling any kind of business with a company, can bring legal prejudices, leaks of trade secrets can even bankrupt companies, especially if they aren’t your secrets. Some famous trade secrets leakage include globally known corporations like Samsung when an employee willingly fed top-secret data into ChatGPT, which retained the information and used it to further train the model. Word of caution – be careful what information you share with AI. To add an extra layer of security, utilizing a VPN can significantly enhance the confidentiality and integrity of your digital communications. Ensuring secure digital content sharing builds trust and reliability, which are essential to maintaining strong business relationships. For this, it’s important to make sure that any sharing mechanism you use safeguards your information against potential threats.

Key features of secure digital catalog sharing

Before delving into the key features to consider for secure digital catalog sharing, let’s start with the basics.

At Flipsnack, we understand the need for security given the ample scope the internet provides to everyone, wrong-doers included. That is why we make sure to offer a wide variety of secure sharing options for all your sensitive information aside from the public sharing options at your disposal. After all, even a digital catalog can include private call information, whether it’s a sales agent’s personal phone number or bank statements shared with stakeholders. While being transparent with your financial information can help, your stakeholders may not want that kind of information at the disposal of any entity that might use it against them.

So, firstly, let’s focus on the basics of private sharing options, and then we’ll get into the more complex ones.

Password protection

The simplest way to ensure your digital content is safe from prying eyes is to password-protect it. When it comes to PDF documents, you have to ensure data protection if you want to implement customer engagement features like videos, links, or buy buttons.

Simply convert your PDF into a digital flipbook through Flipsnack and activate the password protection option. Once you’ve finished editing your digital catalog, publish your flipbook as a password-protected flipbook. Then, simply set a password that will only allow authorized users to access the content. Meaning that anyone who doesn’t know the password won’t be able to open your document.

Flipsnack offers a user-friendly interface. Everything happens with a simple drag-and-drop, so there’s no need for complicated coding skills or experience. From our intuitive Design Studio, where you can create captivating digital catalogs, to our multiple safe sharing options – we’ve made things work for non-technical and experienced users.

Unlisted publishing

Another way to limit access to your digital content is to publish it unlisted, which restricts the ability of search engines to find your content online. This allows you to share digital catalogs through direct links with individuals who need access to it. They will simply open the link like any other link. Unlisted publishing can be the go-to option for documents that you don’t want to be available to the public but that don’t require the most guarded security measures. This is applicable in situations where multiple people need to give their input on a catalog design before this catalog is made public for audiences. Your content won’t show in any public search results, ensuring a controlled distribution, but there are limits to this.

When it comes to unlisted publishing, you may limit search engines from accessing your digital content and control who the content is shared with from your end. However, if anyone who has received the link shares it with third-party entities via a link, those parties will be able to open your content, navigate, and get access to any information included in your digital catalog. This is why we do not suggest using this option for sensitive information that can lead to information leaks if accessed by unauthorized parties.

Private sharing options

Even though sharing digital content through links isn’t completely secure, you can take steps to ensure that only intended recipients can access what you share. For this, you’ll have to publish your digital content privately.

There are two ways to share your content using the private option.

Firstly, the option to share with specific email addresses is pretty straightforward. Email addresses can be added individually or as a CSV list, and only those people can access your content. They will be able to see the full-view flipbook you shared with them. 

Let me explain this a bit. In Flipsnack, you can create workspaces to manage and share documents with readers only. Within a workspace, you can add people/readers who need access to your documents. You just need to upload a CSV file with your readers’ email addresses, and Flipsnack will create accounts for them. These accounts will only allow them to view the flipbooks you share with them. However, they won’t have access to other flipbooks or be able to do anything else.

How to share digital catalogs securely

In the previous section, we reviewed the more secure digital catalog sharing options available in Flipsnack. Now, let’s examine the more complex options available to ensure that only selected people can open any private flipbooks you share online.

1. Domain restriction for embeds

Another less-considered way to limit content access is to restrict where your flipbooks can be embedded. By embedding your flipbook on your website, you can make it available on any website through an iframe code. While this code can be shared far and wide, it can also be restricted. Like that, while a flipbook embedded in your website can increase website traffic and enhance engagement, making site visitors spend more time browsing your online content within the website, you can restrict which website can host your flipbook. Simply add the websites where you allow your flipbook to be embedded and ensure no other website can benefit from any engagement metrics that come with this hosting option.

2. Private profiles

If you don’t want to constantly publish your flipbooks as unlisted to ensure no one has access to them, you can set your Flipsnack profile as private. Therefore, only those people you actively share your content with will be able to see it. Keep in mind that while your profile is private, the catalogs you share via a private link will be shareable with other people in much the same way as the unlisted catalogs. Meaning that even if your profile is private, your catalogs can be accessed by anyone who receives the link. We don’t suggest you use this private sharing option for content that contains private or confidential information.

3. SSO for organizations

The previous options are great if you’re not part of a big company. However, businesses that need advanced and secure digital catalog sharing within their large organizations should consider Flipsnack’s SSO seamless integration. 

SSO (Single Sign-On) makes it simple for your team to access multiple websites and apps with just one login. This means less hassle for your IT team managing accounts and fewer passwords for employees to remember. It boosts productivity, improves user experience, and enhances security. With Flipsnack, you can use popular SSO protocols like SAML, OpenID, or OAuth and connect to identity providers like Okta, Azure, Google Workspace, and more.

The benefits of using Flipsnack’s SSO are the following:

• Use one set of credentials
• Reduce bad password habits
• Save time for your IT admins
• Increase company security

There are two options when it comes to the SSO system:

Single Sign-On for viewers: By using this option, business managers or HR teams can share publications with the entire company without requiring employees to have a Flipsnack account. You can provide secure SSO access for reading the company’s internal digital documents by only requiring your employees to enter their company’s SSO credentials.

Single Sign-On for readers: Share private documents with your readers directly through your SSO system. Readers will be asked to create a Flipsnack account in order to receive your company’s publications. Enable an advanced level of security and a safe manner when dealing with confidential information and files.

Here’s a short video if you want more information on this topic.

Conclusion

In an era where digital catalogs are becoming a cornerstone of effective marketing strategies, ensuring the security of shared content is paramount. The manufacturing, retail, and wholesale industries must navigate a landscape rife with potential security breaches, unauthorized access, and data theft. The increased interconnectivity brought by the internet also brings heightened risks, making businesses need to adopt robust security measures for their digital content.

Flipsnack is a secure digital catalog sharing option that ensures sensitive data and information stay private. Advanced features like access controls and various sharing options guarantee that digital catalogs remain protected. 

Our digital flipbooks offer a versatile and secure solution for sharing sensitive information. With features like password protection, unlisted publishing, and advanced options such as domain restriction for embeds, businesses can maintain control over their digital assets and data privacy. Implementing these security measures protects valuable informatio and builds trust with stakeholders. This enhances compliance with data protection regulations, and ultimately drives business growth. By leveraging Flipsnack’s comprehensive and secure digital catalog sharing options, businesses can safeguard their data, enhance trust, and maintain compliance with evolving industry standards.