Considering the ever-changing market dynamics, it’s time for enterprises to solidify the partnership between IT and security teams to establish a reliable Martech stack.
It seems impossible to imagine even a single week without the news of a major cyber security incident or breach suffered by any top organization. However, still data privacy/compliance reviews and security mandates remain at the bottom of the responsibilities chart for marketing technology and operations teams. Many organizations fail to realize that such lack of attention to security might have major unimaginable implications that are sometimes far too expensive to repair.
IDC revealed that 40% of breaches actually originate from authorized users accessing unauthorized or unsecured systems. Another research conducted by Vanson Bourne also clarified that IT professionals rank marketing among the top teams who are most likely to operate in an insecure manner, and even fail to recognize the underlying risks.
Read More: Martech Innovation, CMOs Should Look Out For in 2020
As per Gartner’s predictions, by 2020, 100% of BODs for large-scale enterprises expect an update on cybersecurity and another pertaining tech risk. Marketing technologists can actually do better in this case, provided they aren’t alone.
The focus should be on establishing a dynamic process for working across diverse teams. Setting the stage for partnership might seem time-consuming, but the outcome will definitely serve as the partnership’s bedrock. Collaborative procedures allow enterprises to manage new technology requests effectively and create a forum to mutually learn from each other. Martech teams need to turn into better security stewards, serving as advocates for IT teams while working with marketing stakeholders.
Processes might differ across different companies, but to get started, it may be prudent to start with this process:
- Marketing identifies the business needs, submitting a request with the “why” and “what” to the martech teams
- Martech/IT teams review these request together to determine and agree on the business priorities, resource sizing, and the overall IT scope
- Output is delivered to marketing leadership for prioritization
- Procurement teams need to work to provide vendors with a proof of concept
- Working with security for risk assessment associated with the vendor; while the recommendations are provided to the IT
- Upon approval from IT and security teams, IT and martech teams can coordinate a plan to implement the technology
- IT and martech teams work closely throughout testing, implementation, development, onboarding, and ongoing maintenance
- Creating a security culture driven by diverse business requirements
Partnering with security and IT teams before purchasing new marketing tech can help the teams to secure their martech stack, ensure safe integrations and implementations, enable productivity, and save the company from expensive privacy regulation violations.
Read More: Differentiation Through Innovation – Businesses Should Unite Employees to Deliver Advanced CX
Though the collaboration between marketing, IT, and security teams the existing basic principle of enterprise operations, the reality is quite different. Marketing teams need to be more responsible as well as responsive while communicating with other departments, especially IT and security.
Responsiveness and ownership of security concerns in Martech applications has turned out to be a burning need for CMOs to address ensuring their martech investments’ success.
