Consumers are becoming more aware of how important data security and privacy is. In today’s digital world, cybersecurity protocols and marketing efforts are becoming critical to stay safe from online threats.
Both cybersecurity and marketing are essential for maintaining customer trust, driving business growth and protecting customers’ sensitive data. Marketers can build trust with their audience by following the highest cybersecurity standards and making sure that the organization is not making them think twice about where their sensitive data is being stored.
In this article, we’ll be learning more about how the interaction of cybersecurity protocols and marketing efforts are important for safeguarding customers’ sensitive information.
Data protection and customer trust
Customers need to be sure that your cybersecurity protocols are top-notch and that their data is safely stored in your organization. More than 6 million data records are exposed worldwide through data breaches.
Customers expect that their purchases, credit card details and all other personal data are securely kept and accessed with authorized use. While many used to think data protection and cybersecurity are two separate entities, users will usually perceive security as a technical issue.
Cybersecurity protocols are separated into several categories that range from business to mobile systems:
- Application security: This protects software from attacks. When the application is compromised, unauthorized users can access sensitive data that the app is supposed to protect.
- Network security: Secures computer networks from online attackers. These online attackers can be disguised in either malware or in any other anonymous form.
- Operational security: Refers to all decisions made for protecting and handling data assets.
- Information security: Handles the privacy and integrity of data.
Let’s not forget that data protection needs to also comply with important data protection laws such as:
- The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR): Has brought one of the greatest innovations to the data privacy world and is considered one of the toughest ones. It was created and passed by the European Union (EU). All organizations that collect and target data of people within the EU are obliged to meet the GDPR’s requirements.
- The California Privacy Rights Act (CPRA): Another large data privacy law regulator is the CPRA. They are similar, but the only difference is that the CPRA covers all California residents and those who do business within its boundaries.
Failing to comply with these laws will have you face charges and most likely damage your business reputation. A business reputation is highly important for reducing your marketing efforts since customers will always buy a product or service from someplace they trust.
Fraud detection systems
Fraud detection systems are used to prevent fraudsters from accessing customers’ sensitive information. Commonly targeted areas are financial institutions like banks. Fraudsters will try to open bank accounts through a stolen ID, money laundering activities, or attempt to get past someone’s passcode.
In this case, fraud detection systems used by banks will use a set of features to prevent fraud from occurring, such as:
- KYC checks: Involved ID verifications, which is an essential part of a good fraud detection system.
- Digital footprint analysis: Deeply analyzes data to see if the person entering data is real or not. Used for detecting fake accounts or fraudsters who took over real accounts.
- Real-time monitoring alerts: Alerts you on real-time attacks and allows you to take quick action.
- Machine learning (ML) suggestions: Fraudsters will always try a new method to attack you. The ML suggestions allow you to adapt to all of their new attacks by giving your risk rules. The risk rules assess all risk challenges.
Marketing teams need to ensure that data is securely shared, so while they focus on more important tasks, fraud detection systems reduce marketing efforts by identifying suspicious activities and reducing potential future threats.
User authentication
Marketing teams each have their own roles when it comes to accessing sensitive information. However, keep in mind that not everyone should have equal access to certain information. User authentication requires an individual to provide their ID before they have permission to access certain data. You’d be surprised that 74% of attacks are insider threats.
User authentication will only give authorized users special access to applications and systems. When the system knows who the user is, all policies will apply and only grant users the amount of access they are authorized to. In other words, this is called “Authorization”.
Authorization is great because it controls who has access to what and can immediately cancel out all people who shouldn’t be accessing certain information. After all, not everyone in the marketing team should have access to all types of data, so this is an excellent practice.
Data encryption
Data encryption will translate data into another form to ensure that only people with authorized access get a hold of the “secret” key. It’s one of the most important cybersecurity practices used by marketers. There are two main types of data encryption that exist:
- Asymmetric encryption
- Symmetric encryption
Symmetric encryption uses the same key for both decrypting and encrypting a file or message. Compared to asymmetric encryption, it’s much faster and requires the sender to exchange the encryption key with the recipient before they decrypt it.
Asymmetric encryption is also called “public-key cryptography.” It’s shared with everyone, keeping in mind that the private key needs to be protected.
Marketers are dealing with large chunks of data every day, especially due to the fact that they are trying to personalize their services to their audience. Data encryption provides encryption for emails, data and all devices your team will use.
Common challenges faced by organizations are losing sensitive data due to employees using web apps often, external devices, and more. Once data is copied to removable devices, the organization might not have full control of it.
Customer engagement
Understanding the risks related to cyber systems is crucial for organizations. Let’s face it, it’s necessary for an organization to prevent any misuse of client’s information and if this isn’t promised, the brand’s reputation gets affected. Once customers lose their trust, it highly affects retention rates.
Companies with engaged employees will outperform their competitors by 147%. Customers want a smooth experience like an easy login, great mobile experience and fast web response. Poor security measures are the main factor that affects the customer experience and significantly reduces engagement rates.
Some great practices you can take for promoting online security and improving the customer experience and engagement levels are to:
- Quickly respond to data breaches
- Secure contact points throughout the customer’s journey
- Be transparent with data collection policies
- Work together with online hackers to stop data breaches
Working together with ethical hackers is never a bad idea. They know each other’s next moves and the way they think.
Phishing awareness
Phishing is considered a crime where an online attack tries to get a hold of online credentials by impersonating someone else or sending users to a site that will steal your information. Many online attackers will perform these acts by sending out emails, persuading you to click on the email.
A common trick used is usually when cybercriminals write down some persuasive subject line on the email. For example “Get $1000 by clicking here”, “Get your free phone here”, and many other manipulative subject lines.
While older spam emails used to be easily identified, modern-day ones are becoming more personalized. The problem is that marketers will always write a personalized email and once an online attacker starts to write a similar one, it becomes problematic to distinguish.
One good trick to learn more about avoiding phishing emails is to know that they always have some kind of link. This is called a Phishing link. Once you see an email that looks too promotional and is encouraging you to click on the link, that’s when you should start to get concerned.
The entire reason why cybersecurity protocols affect marketing efforts and vice versa
As we mentioned throughout the entire article, data collection is highly important for marketers and when it’s put at risk, not only are customers losing their trust in organizations, it’s affecting their long-term revenue as well.
Moreover, data breaches can significantly affect the reputation of a business and when this happens, not only does it make marketers work harder, it affects the way customers engage with you and lowers trust levels.
The Author:
Tony Ademi is a freelance SEO content and copywriter. For roughly four years, Tony has managed to write more than 500 SEO-optimized articles and most of them have ranked #1 on Google. When writing, Tony’s main focus is to carefully do research and make sure that his content is high-quality.
