Cyber security & IP protection for online fitness brands

Protect your fitness brand online.

This article is written by Sarah Cordiner from www.sarahcordiner.com.

Cyber Security & IP Protection for Online Fitness Brands – with Caitriona Forde

The fitness world grows online every second. More of us publish important information online.

We put our intellectual property out online as health course creators, exercise experts, nutrition coaches and wellness consultants.

Most fitness brands depend on the online space for their primary source of income.

New entrants into the fitness world depend on the online space to move forward and reach their full potential.

The online fitness world has the power to reach audiences and change people's lives around the world.

While publishing fitness content online benefits many people and helps us to earn an income, we are also putting ourselves at risk. In many cases we put our health business at risk and potentially (even without realizing it) break the law.

In this article I have an incredible qualified expert in cybersecurity, Caitriona Ford. She is going to help us to keep our fitness business cyber safe.

Caitriona is going to give us some useful tips about how we can stay cyber safe when we depend on the cyber world of health and fitness.

Be proactive.

What if my fitness brand gets hacked?

Many online businesses are getting hacked by hackers and criminals. That can have a devastating effect on your fitness business.

It can cost a huge amount of money and negatively affect your health brand. Many online brands don’t recover for a long time. A lot of them never do.

One of the scariest statistics that I heard about 2 years ago was that 95% of all cyber-attacks happen because of human error. If you get hacked, it's almost entirely because of something that you did wrong - or something that you didn't do at all.

Most fitness professionals think that they are too small to concern themselves with online security.

"I'm a small one-man-band, so this doesn't apply to me". "I'm just creating my wellness courses". "I' just do wellness coaching online, so cyber-attacks won't affect me".

This simple mistake makes you an easy target. Cyber criminals prey on brands with people of this kind of mentality.

Every effort makes a difference.

Change your passwords to all of your online fitness platforms

This is probably one of the first things that you thought of neglecting when you thought about how you haven't prioritized your online security. You'd be right.

Everybody hates changing passwords. It takes work. I was one of these people as well.

This was until I started studying the online security space. 

I realized that hackers already have my passwords. If you haven't changed the passwords for your social media platforms in the past 12 months, anyone can get access to your passwords.

The chances are high that your passwords are sitting in databases that can be sold in large batches to anybody who wants them.

There are a few online sites that you can use to check this out. You can enter your email address and see everywhere that your password has been stolen. This happens through data breaches that people can capitalize on.

Most cyber criminals' goal is to make money. They build long lists of personal information that they can sell. Your information is waiting for the right seller.

People sell personal information to other people on the dark web. Most people purchase this information and use it to scam you.

Cyber-crime is the new form of burglary. People are looking for new ways to use your information for their financial gain. They do this with long lists of details from many people.

Solo entrepreneurs and smaller businesses like most online fitness professionals are at the greatest risk. This is because you are considered to be the low hanging fruit (easy to access but less reward than the larger targets that take more time).

You probably don’t invest any money in your IT at all. You don’t look at your online security - not even enough to change your passwords.

You probably use the same password for everything. Someone only needs one password and they have access to your whole business.

This makes you a super easy target.

Most cyber criminals that would focus on your level of account come from third world countries. A hundred bucks to them is worth a lot more than it is to you. It could feed their family for the next month.

Change your freaking passwords frequently!

Consistency brings rewards.

Password storage tools for online fitness brands

Many people who work online use password storage tools. Most health and wellness brands don't do this because they focus so much on content that can inspire their potential audience.

Most health brands focus on the next piece of content before they finish the current one. We focus on growth instead of protecting what we've already built up.

Most other online professionals use password storage tools. This is particularly because a lot of them use contractors that work all over the world with them. People need to share account access with a lot of different online profiles.

People in the health and fitness world (at least when it comes to one-man influences) don't rely on more than a single profile to build their content. This makes them focus less on security and therefore makes them neglect security in general.

Your false sense of security puts you at greater risk.

Password managers are much better compared to using the same password over different online platforms. You can let them generate a password that is difficult to remember.

You don't have to remember your passwords. If you can't remember your password, you are forced to use a different one each time.

If you can remember your password, there's a chance that a database has your password in its memory storage as well.

Do it for the sake of prevention.

Keep your password security up to date

I personally always use the random generator. You should get into using it too.

Never use the same password for any of your online accounts. If one account gets hacked, you can lose all of your accounts. This is one of the first things that people check for when they break into your account.

Let a password manager generate passwords for you - especially your social media platforms. Social media is like a gold mine of information for people who need personal information and know how to get it.

Get into the habit of changing one of your passwords for one of your accounts once a month. Rather be too safe.

Two-factor authentication deters a lot of entry-level hackers. Why bother with one of these when you can get all the information that you need from the next account?

You won’t have to invest a huge amount of money to keep yourself safe if you do these basic things. It will feel like a bit of a chore the first time that you do it, but it will become automatic after time (juts like most other healthy habits).

A false sense of security gives other people the gap to take chances. It is better to prepare like it is going to happen - because it will happen eventually if you don't.

You need to look up your intellectual property. What is of most value to your online fitness brand? What do you need to recover if you lose everything?

If you plan for the worst, the worst will never happen to you. 

Small actions avoid big costs.

Keep your intellectual property safe

How do we keep our IP safe as health course creators?

Look at where you save your IP. Is it on a cloud resource or a cloud server? Check if you have full control and full ownership of that data when it is online.

Some platforms hide very well in their T&C's that any data that you publish or save on their platform becomes their data and they own the rights to that data.

This used to be a big issue many years ago. It isn't so much of an issue on most platforms today, but you should check to be certain.

In some countries, you need to store data within your own country if you want to claim the right to it. It is wise to be aware of the legislation regarding your fitness content online.

Check for small things like this. Big platforms make sure that they cover their bases legally. This can sometimes impede on your own content that you've worked so hard to produce.

Don't lose to negligence.

Back up everything

And the big one is: always backup, backup, backup!

If your data is stolen by any chance, how do you get it back? What do you do if someone deletes all of your content?

You should be able to recover everything with a backup of your most valuable content.

If you don’t, you might have to pay the ransom if criminals ask for that.

I like to have multiple copies of my data everywhere - protected with different passwords. Make this more complicated in accordance with the size of your fitness brand.

Multiple copies in various locations make you practically invincible to data theft online. If these copies have time stamps, you can also prove that the specific content belongs to you.

Prepare for everything.

This article is written by Sarah Cordiner from www.sarahcordiner.com with the help of qualified cyber security expert, Caitriona Ford.