Asset protection

You can determine which assets in your product environment are viewable by applying moderation and setting the access control mode.

• Moderation allows you to reject assets that don't meet your company standards, if they, for example, are low quality or contain adult content.

• The access control mode allows you to restrict the asset from being viewed outside the Media Library, except for during a specified time range.

Asset moderation

Moderating assets uploaded to Cloudinary ensures that inappropriate or offensive content is excluded, assets meet your quality requirements, and uploaded images meet your specific needs (e.g., profile pictures with visible faces).

You can apply manual or automatic moderation, or a combination of both, during asset uploads. Below is an overview of how asset moderation works.

Manual vs. automatic moderation

• Manual moderation: Depending on administrator and folder permission levels, you or a moderator from your team reviews and approves or rejects the assets. Manual moderations can override decisions made by automatic moderations.
• Automatic moderation: Deep learning algorithms automatically flag inappropriate content or assets that don't meet quality standards.

You can use both manual and automatic moderation together during a single upload.

Setting up moderation

Assets are marked for moderation during upload using upload presets. Your administrator can either add a new upload preset or edit an existing one, and activate manual moderation or automatic moderation via add-ons. For more information, see Automatic and manual moderation from the DAM admin guides.

If your administrator has set an upload preset with the desired moderation settings as your Media Library default upload preset, newly uploaded assets will be automatically marked for moderation. You can also apply the moderation manually by using the Media Library Upload Widget and selecting an upload preset with the moderation settings you want.

Reviewing assets manually

Users with Master admin, Media Library admin, and Technical admin roles can moderate assets. Additionally, Media Library users with the Moderate asset administrator permission can moderate assets in folders that they have Can Edit or Can Manage permissions to. You can view all moderated assets from the Moderation page and filter assets by moderation type and decision status.

• Manual moderation: When manual moderation is enabled, assets are marked as Pending after upload and are displayed on the Moderation page, where a moderator reviews them and decides whether to accept or reject based on the content.

• Automatic moderation: You can also view assets marked for automatic moderations on the Moderation page, along with their decision status.

  • You can manually override automatic decisions, such as approving a rejected image or rejecting an approved one.
  • If you manually approve or reject an asset, it will be considered manually moderated, even if it was initially flagged by automatic moderation. The asset will then appear under the Manual filter.

• Multiple moderation: As each moderation type is applied and resolved, the asset’s moderation status changes.

  • You can manually override moderation decisions for assets marked for multiple moderations, as well.
  • You can also view the asset’s moderation history to track this progress.

    For more information see Applying multiple moderations.

To review assets:

1. From the Product Navigation menu, select Moderation.
   
2. Browse the assets. Use the filters to select the moderation type and status of the assets you want to review.
   To find assets marked for multiple moderations:
   • While the asset is being processed, filter pending assets under the moderation type currently applied.
   • If the asset's final status is rejected, the asset will be found under the moderation type that rejected it.
   • If the asset's final status is accepted, the asset will be found under the last moderation type that was applied.
   • If the final status was determined manually, the asset will be found under Manual moderation, regardless of whether the asset was originally marked for manual moderation.
3. Decide to accept or reject them.

To view an asset's moderation history:

Once you've opened the moderation page and found the asset you're looking for either:

• Double click the asset to open the Management drill-down and select the Moderation icon.
  OR
• Select the asset and open the Preview Pane, then click the Moderation tab.

See how the moderation changes after each moderation is applied:

One moderation applied Three moderations applied

Access control modes

You can view and update an asset's access control mode directly from the Media Library.

A person can view a Restricted asset outside the Media Library only if that person has both the asset URL and an authentication token. Downloads are also restricted if your administrator has turned on the Block restricted asset downloads option in the Early Access page of the Media Library Preferences. The restrictions apply except during an optional time-limited date range when the asset is defined as publicly accessible.

Time-limited restricted access can be useful for an image or video that's intended to be used for a special campaign or that shows a new product design, and it's imperative that the asset will not be shared outside the organization prior to an official launch date. Or conversely, it may be important to stop enabling the public to view or share an asset after the content is obsolete.

To view access control settings:

You can see whether your asset is set to Public or Restricted in one of the following locations:

• The Summary tab of the Media Library Preview pane
• The Asset Management Summary tab

Uploading with access control

If you want to set the same access control settings for a set of assets you are uploading to the Media Library, an Assets administrator can apply the required access control settings in the upload preset(s) you are using as your Media Library upload preset defaults.

Alternatively, when you upload using the Media Library Upload Widget, you may be able to select an Upload Preset that has been set to upload with restricted access control settings.

Authentication tokens for access control

If you need to allow someone access to a restricted asset via a URL, outside the time range that an asset is set as public, you will need to provide that person with the relevant authentication token. You should work with your Assets administrator or developers on your team to generate and distribute the required token.

Managing asset versions

You can list, preview and restore previous versions of an asset from the asset management drill down page by clicking Version History from the kebab menu:

To preview a specific version of the asset, click Open in new tab. To restore a previous version, click the Restore version history link next to the listed version.

Restoring deleted assets

To restore deleted assets through the Media Library, navigate to Advanced Search. From the Delivery type filter, select assets of type Deleted asset.

You can optionally narrow the search down further using other Advanced Search filters, then double-click the asset you want to restore. Select a specific version to restore as described in Managing asset versions, either by clicking Version History in the Preview area or the kebab menu of the asset management drill down page, and then clicking Restore visual content.

Restoring deleted assets video tutorial

Watch this video tutorial to learn more about restoring deleted assets in the Media Library:

Tutorial contents