Digital marketing has opened up a whole new world of opportunities for companies of all sizes to promote themselves. From small businesses with no budgets to international corporations with over thousands of employees, digital marketing serves for all. Most types of marketing online require businesses to collect and process massive data about their customers. But when data breaches happen, it hits customer data, and the company’s reputation is at risk. This makes cybersecurity a primary concern of leadership beyond the cyber security team – customer data is the responsibility of CMOs and marketing professionals.
From the marketing perspective, here are some ideas to protect data privacy and mitigate this risk:
Making clients and employees aware about the rules of digital hygiene
Last year, almost 700 million people worldwide fell victim to some kind of cybercrime. As per research by security firm Kroll, most of the data breaches took place due to negligence and human error and not because of software flaws. This increases the fear of phishing and primitive passwords rather than somebody hacking the security software. It is essential to teach employees to use complex passwords. It is also necessary to establish an anti-phishing strategy and communicate that to the clients.
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Using VPN and encryption certificate
Due to the nature of their work, marketing professionals have access to all sensitive and personal data of clients. Since marketers use it on a daily basis, they become particularly attractive targets for hackers and cybercriminals. A Virtual Private Network (VPN) tool creates an encrypted “corridor” that can help in reducing the chances of being hacked.
Installing a digital HTTPS certificate that encrypts the traffic not just protects the personal and financial data of clients, but also brings added commercial benefits. In this age, the tech-savvy customers trust https websites more, and the search engines too rank them higher. This also improves the results of marketing efforts.
Using strong passwords
According to a research by UK’s National Cyber Security Centre, over 23 million accounts that were cracked in 2018, used “123456” as their password. Also there were 24 more other popular simplistic passwords that accounted for millions of cracked accounts. It is good to use strong passwords, especially for accounts of digital marketers as they are likely to be targeted by hackers.
While these are the basics of cybersecurity, in 2019, it is imperative to know them and practice them. It is also the duty of marketers to their company and clients.
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