The cybersecurity threats that organizations face today are primarily associated with brand damage, trust issues, and significant financial losses. That’s only natural since every potential privacy concern, data breach, or security-related risk will likely take its toll on a business.
In a world where cloud marketing solutions and technology are the new normal, there’s no easy way to eliminate the possibility of data breaches or protect data entirely. In fact, companies need to play the long game when trying to achieve this goal.
But when a data breach occurs, the company’s response matters just as much as the systems created to regularly assess its vulnerabilities. In other words, every security incident such as unauthorized access, security manipulation, fraud, or data loss requires not only an action plan but also constantly evolving frameworks and exceptional network architecture.
Marketing Automation & Data Privacy
Today, it’s impossible to think of a business that’s not security-sensitive. Now more than ever, companies rely on technology and data to remain competitive, scale their campaigns, and yield good results.
The same is true of companies offering marketing automation solutions. Since cybersecurity is essential to their success and growth, they can’t afford to underestimate the importance of ensuring data protection and remaining compliant while embracing automation.
It’s not uncommon to turn to third-party platforms since it helps companies quickly level up their MarTech (Marketing Technology) stack. As a marketer, you’re looking to learn about your audience’s preferences, provide excellent recommendations, and deliver hyper-personalized experiences.
Lack of data is the biggest obstacle on your way to success. But with a marketing automation solution in place, you can leverage big data and put it to work to get a comprehensive view of your audience. For instance, brands can effectively connect with prospects, segment their customers, engage, and analyze with Phonexa, an all-in-one marketing automation solution for calls, leads, clicks, email, SMS, accounting, and more.
One of the goals automation pursues is to evaluate and deliver a personalized customer experience. Big data is, essentially, the fuel for personalization. The ability of companies to harness behavioral data and identify patterns allows getting a 360-degree view of your prospects and clients.
Ultimately, data is your biggest asset and your biggest liability, especially when it comes to cybersecurity.
Tackling Cybersecurity Issues
Whatever reason is behind a cyber attack or an attempt to block or gain access to personal data, it has the enormous potential to trigger a grievance against the companies supplying and utilizing an automation solution.
Every piece of data that you collect and store is valuable. Whether it is a phone number, email, or user location, you will be held responsible for protection measures and precautions.
Whether you’re a marketer or the marketing automation product owner, it’s critical to ensure that data won’t be stolen, leaked, or misused. So let’s take a closer look at how data protection can be achieved in marketing automation.
Regular Risk Assessment
Risk assessment is one of the preventative measures that can help with crisis communication plans and vulnerability identification.
It’s not uncommon for cloud solutions to partner with companies offering security assessment services that help reduce risks and employ preventive security plans. Internal expert tech teams can also carry out routine vulnerability assessments as an additional precaution.
Prevention Of Password Attacks
It’s no secret that a weak password is probably the biggest and the most common security threat. The good news is this threat is also the most preventable one.
Cloud solutions often use attack prevention systems to reduce the chances of brute-force attacks. Such systems create a unique captcha for each login attempt and automatically lock the account after several failed attempts.
On top of that, cloud solutions often set up mandatory two-factor authentication as a second login step. This way, companies protect clients from hackers who often exploit weak or stolen credentials.
Verification Of Protection Capabilities
If you’re a customer looking to verify the company’s protection capabilities, you can request information on the organization’s ability to meet global compliance standards. As a data processor, every company offering marketing automation services must guarantee asset security by following specific standards like ISO and IEC .
Intrusion Prevention
More often than not, cloud solutions use several layers of intrusion prevention. For instance, it can be a web application firewall, Google Cloud firewall, and internal firewall. This way, clients can rest assured that no cross-site scripting or forgery requests will occur.
Practice Responsible Marketing
The modern digital marketing industry requires strong data protection and robust marketing infrastructure. But building cloud solutions with security in mind and collaborating with external partners to safeguard data is only part of the solution.
To ensure data protection, companies need to go through security audits, verify their data protection capabilities, and remember that they’re in it for the long haul. Otherwise, processing and storing digital data will indeed transform from their biggest asset into the biggest liability.