Synergy Between Marketing And It Boosts Cybersecurity

By Author: Appsian
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Marketing is all about data today. In order to create and distribute highly personalized communications to reach prospects and consumers across the appropriate channels, every aspect of marketing relies on enterprise applications for data and insights. From consumer actions and expectations to buyer intent and interaction touchpoints, terabytes of data on all aspects keep marketing running at high levels.

Most of the data and software are supplied by third-party data companies and SaaS technologies that are housed and managed inside marketing, and not the IT department. This extra-departmental pattern has many explanations behind it. More workers are tech-savvy digital natives, less reliant on IT for solutions, and there are not enough developers to tackle the abundance of required marketing data and analysis, especially for small businesses. And marketing/developer mismatches frequently lead executives to hunt for their own solutions.

The pattern is widespread and accelerating and is not limited to marketing. Gartner recently found that applications housed outside the IT department account for 30 to 40 percent ...
... of IT spending in large companies.

Unfortunately, when it comes to protecting these vital assets, marketing and IT are always on different planes. In 2018, multiple explanations were suggested by a 10-country RSA study. The research identified substantial variations in employee attitudes as they related to the use of workarounds, security assessments, teamwork, choice of software, and security risks. It is unsurprising, given the misalignment, that Gartner projects that completely one-third of all active attacks faced by companies are on their shadow IT resources.

When important marketing data is handled outside of IT, there is a need to be careful. It is unlikely that the data boom and use of powerful solutions supported by third-party suppliers will decline in the near future. With these best practices, security teams can plan for this onslaught and handle the changes ahead.

Oversight

Security should keep close control of third-party suppliers and marketing technologies and ensure that all cyber partners and contractors understand the data governance policies of the company and remain in line with them. Before they choose vendors and third-party suppliers to work with, marketing department leaders should be provided with a good understanding of the company's security requirements.

Making Marketing Part Of Incident Response Strategy

Security specialists should ensure that their incident response plan provides ample information to marketing, including, among other items, when and how the cyber team will work to communicate a violation with marketing. It's necessary to rehearse what to do when an incident takes place with marketing and the other corporate functions.

Enabling A Security Mindset

Ensure instruction on the basics of security and the production and adoption of consumer data protection policies and other marketing activities. A protection policy for social media practices is one thing to include, including training staff about their healthy and suitable uses. Hacks are often evoked by controversial social statements, but a little preparation can go a long way. Act on effective preparation and alignment of your marketing leads, HR, and risk advisors.

Given how consumer interactions are driven by data access and data governance, it is clear that marketing has a key role in cyber risk management that, in the years ahead, can only command more resources. Decreasing cyber insecurity in the marketing function is an exercise for both marketing and IT security teams, and partnerships on this front will be critical to advancing digital transformation initiatives.

Appsian One of the leading ERP data security,compliance,implementation solutions provider that gives organizations to complete control and visibility over their ERP data.