As a business owner, making sure your core assets are protected can be difficult to get right.
As they are often key assets that are crucial to the success of your business, you will want to make sure they are safely protected. The alternative may be assuming the risk of losing elements without which you cannot run your business.
This article will outline what core assets are, in what ways they might be at risk, and how to protect them.
What are core assets?
Core assets are defined as all the assets without which your company cannot continue with its operations whilst remaining profitable.
What are the core assets of a business? It depends on the type of business in question. They may include physical assets such as business premises and property, equipment and stock or machinery, as well as cash. Core assets can also include data and intangible assets like intellectual property as well as unique processes and material that is copyrighted to your business.
The approach to protecting assets depends on the type of asset in question. You can learn more below about the different ways of protecting your core assets.
How can you protect your core assets?
There are various ways you can go about protecting your business’ core assets in order to mitigate any risk of them being damaged or breached.
When your core assets include IP (intellectual property), confidential or sensitive information or data, it’s important to think about the policies which should be put in place to prevent and protect against unauthorised access. This is a big part of securing these intangible assets. Among other things, these policies may set out that only selected members of staff shall have access to these assets and only for limited purposes. After all, leaks are a huge risk and careless employees who are not aware of the risks may accidentally share something that shouldn’t be shared.
Still talking about employees, one way in which you can protect your IP and your data is through establishing robust employment agreements, which ensures that anyone who is employed within your business is forbidden from revealing any restricted records, formulas or intellectual property. To learn more about LawBite’s business legal advice for your employment contracts, click here.
If you need to disclose sensitive data and information to someone who is not your employee, you can also use Confidentiality and Non-Disclosure agreements to prevent company information from becoming public knowledge.
If your business relies on trademarks, patents and copyrights, you should document your ownership of these assets so that your brand and ideas are legally protected and safeguarded.
Intellectual property is very valuable and therefore you might need to have insurance to protect these assets. This is known as intellectual property insurance. It may provide cover against others trying to infringe on your IP rights, assistance if a claim on IP infringement is made against your business and cash flow protection. These covers may also reassure investors that the value of the assets is protected and will not be lost.
To learn more about LawBite’s business legal advice for intellectual property, click here.
In terms of equipment and materials (which are physical assets and may include stock and cash), the biggest threat is physical damage - they might be lost, stolen or breached, or maybe damaged by some other means like a fire.
To protect your equipment and materials, you’ll need to carry out regular asset checks to make sure you are keeping track of all these physical assets. It might also be important to make sure that only authorised members of staff will have access to these assets. You may also consider obtaining insurance to cover the risks associated with these assets.
If you own or rent premises from where you run your business, it is essential that you get all the necessary approvals and permits to use the premises to operate your business from there and your lease agreements must address such use. To learn more about LawBite’s business legal advice for your property, click here.
Insurance is another good protection for your premises. You may need commercial property insurance which includes buildings and contents insurance. This will cover insurance of the building and business premises in case of damage through fires, floods and theft, etc. Such policy may be combined with a contents insurance policy which covers any equipment or stock inside the business premises.
How LawBite can help
It does not matter which assets are the core assets of your business. LawBite can help protect them. LawBite aims to offer support through our expert legal advice as you set out on your new business journey. We can help you minimise potential risk to your operations and ensure your assets are secure - whether these assets are part of the digital economy or the brick-and-mortar economy - or both. Our support is easy to access, clear to understand and affordable.
If you want to learn more about how LawBite can help you protect your business and core assets, click here.
You can get legal assistance from LawBite
LawBite’s mission is to democratise how SMEs get the expert law they need - easier to access, clearer to understand and much more affordable. We connect you with the best lawyers to give you top-class legal advice. If you were wondering how to protect your business’ core assets, we hope this article has been helpful in outlining ways you can go about this depending on your business.
If you have any further questions about LawBite or core assets, you can book a free 15-minute consultation with one of our lawyers.
