What is a digital watermark?
A digital watermark is a unique identifier embedded into content like videos, images, or electronic documents. Watermarks are either visible, like a semi-transparent overlay, or invisible to users.
By including details like the content’s owner, copyright status, or file source, these watermarks:
- Protect your intellectual property
- Verify the authenticity of the information
- Prevent unauthorized access
- Track document sharing
According to Business Research Insights, the global digital watermark technology market will reach $97.58 million by 2031. The ever-growing popularity of video is driving this growth, as its dominance across social media, streaming platforms, and online advertising has increased the demand for effective ways to manage content rights.
Types of digital watermarking
A digital watermark comes in many forms, depending on the purpose of your content. For example:
- Noticeable text overlays indicating file confidentiality are the best option for contract drafts
- Covertly embedded or invisible digital watermarks are appropriate for product blueprints
Let’s review common watermark formats.
Type of watermarking | How it works | Best use case with examples |
Pixel-based | Embeds watermarks by modifying the individual pixels of an image or file | Creating simple, visible watermarks, such as adding a logo to a photo or text on draft documents |
Vector-based | Turns watermarks into scalable vector graphics without losing quality | Maintaining watermark readability at any size, such as detailed design blueprints or architectural plans |
Frequency domain | Hides watermarks in the color patterns of an image or video, making it hard to see and even harder to remove | Embedding invisible watermarks on documents like brand videos or medical imaging documents |
How do digital watermarks work?
Embedding watermarks and actively using software to detect and decode them protects the integrity of your files.
Here are the three main steps of the digital watermarking process.
1. Embedding a watermark
The first step is to insert a watermark (whether text-based, image-based, or a combination of the two) into a document or file using digital watermarking software. Your choice of solution depends on the characteristics you require. For example, your watermark can be:
- Visible by anyone, like a logo for branding purposes or a prominent text overlay
- Fragile in nature to quickly detect tampering or content modifications
- Robust and resistant to transformations like compression, cropping, or scaling
Cloud-based document storage platforms streamline the process with built-in watermarking features. For example, you can create an automated digital workflow that applies pixel-based watermarks to all new documents in a specific folder, ensuring they follow the same standards.
2. Scanning media for watermarks
Watermark detection is either done manually by visually inspecting a document or using software solutions (in the case of invisible watermarks). Detection software quickly and efficiently identifies and tracks unauthorized copies, alerting you to possible tampering, which could have negative business consequences.
The detection process has two main steps.
- Analyzing the document to locate embedded watermarks, applying algorithms to analyze pixel patterns, text structures, or metadata
- Verifying a detected watermark’s presence and authenticity, confirming the document is unaltered
3. Extracting and decoding the data
Decoding watermarks involves extracting the actual information embedded within them. For example, a health dossier’s invisible watermark might include personally identifiable information (PII), clinical data, and links to additional documentation that a doctor or researcher will extract.
How does a digital watermark protect your content?
Let’s look at five benefits of digital watermarking.
1. Limiting unauthorized access
According to a 2024 Verizon report, 68% of all data breaches involve a degree of human error, like unauthorized file sharing. A digital watermark, when combined with platform-based access controls, helps you reduce these risks, protecting your shared content by ensuring only authorized users read or modify documents.
This layer of security offers these benefits:
- Blocking unauthorized viewers from opening watermarked files
- Ensuring only content owners have editing privileges
- Blocking the sharing of watermarked files by specific user roles
- Removing the ability to print sensitive watermarked documents
For example, using a cloud platform to watermark and share your files allows you to define granular user roles and access rules. These controls prevent anyone other than the content owner from accessing files with watermarks applied to them.
2. Simplifying copyright enforcement
Embedding unique identifiers into your content provides undeniable proof of authorship, making it easier to trace copyright infringement. Readily available, incontrovertible evidence of ownership helps deter unauthorized use of your content and speeds up the process for legal disputes.
3. Enabling content tracking
Adopting watermarks creates audit trails, which help you better identify the source of distributed content. For example, watermarking files with a semi-transparent overlay of the current viewer’s email address, IP address, and access time would simplify the following tasks:
- Tracing and monitoring how your content is shared and used
- Identifying the source of files for better control and accountability
Discover how document audit trails simplify your data lifecycle management.
4. Maintaining content integrity
Digital watermarking helps maintain content integrity by detecting and tracing unauthorized modifications. The best example is fragile watermarks, which flag apparent signs of tampering. This safeguard makes certifying a document’s authenticity easy, which is important for sensitive information requiring stringent security and compliance.
5. Discouraging unauthorized distribution
Putting your digital stamp on a document discourages unauthorized distribution, lowering the incentive to share by increasing the likelihood of detection and facing accountability for using content without permission.
For example, using a cloud photo management platform to watermark your images ensures that you maintain brand recognition while making it difficult for others to pass the images off as their own.
Streamline your digital watermarking workflow with Box
Box helps you create, store, and share files while managing your information rights with automated vector-based watermarking. Prevent data leaks and unauthorized resharing of sensitive content using a multi-layered approach that embeds scalable watermarks with searchable text and links — all without increasing file sizes.
With our zero-trust architecture, your team’s collaboration stays secure. Leverage security features that also include stronger user authentication, permissioning roles, device trust, data encryption, centralized audit logs, and more.
Contact us to learn how Box enhances your document security with digital watermarks.
**While we maintain our steadfast commitment to offering products and services with best-in-class privacy, security, and compliance, the information provided in this blog post is not intended to constitute legal advice. We strongly encourage prospective and current customers to perform their own due diligence when assessing compliance with applicable laws.