Privacy and Security in Digital Marketing: Threats You need to Know

The online world is full of potential cyber threats that companies are unaware of, most of which fly under the radar until it is too late. Whether an employee unwittingly shares sensitive business information with the wrong person or if one of your user accounts gets hacked, there is no denying that one successful cyber attack can put your brand in jeopardy. One of the sectors in your company that is most exposed to these privacy and security risks is your marketing department.

The COVID-19 pandemic has certainly changed digital marketing, and aside from influencing advertising trends, it has also elevated the importance of cybersecurity. Now that more and more people are spending time browsing the web, hackers and scammers are trying to access sensitive information, while employees working from home are at higher risk of cyber attacks. If you want to safeguard your marketing department in the new normal, here are the privacy and security threats you need to know how to deal with promptly.

Monitoring Communication and Network Traffic

The first threat you need to be aware of is during contact between your marketing experts and customers or clients, as well as communication between team members. Now that your marketers are constantly communicating via online channels internally and externally, there is a greater chance that someone might be listening in on the chatter, picking up on useful information, and even trying to enter your network while flying under your radar.

This is why it’s important to monitor the chatter and continuously inspect the traffic in your network to identify potential security threats and backdoors that hackers and scammers might try to exploit. By integrating a secure web gateway, for example, you can:

Spotting Scams and Email Threats

Email marketing and correspondence is essential for the success of any marketing team, and any marketing strategy. That said, it is exactly the popularity of email that makes it so alluring to scammers and hackers around the world, because there is always a chance that an email will avoid all the spam filters and end up directly in your inbox. When that happens, an employee might inadvertently give out sensitive information, or a customer might think that they are exchanging emails with one of your marketers and give their personal information to a scammer.

Needless to say, you need to minimize email threats in order to safeguard your brand and your employees, so it’s important to educate your marketers on safe email communication. Make sure they know how to spot scams and malicious emails, and how to identify malware hidden in emails to prevent data breaches.

Preventing Privacy and Security Attacks With the Right Firewalls

Most of the time, your marketers are not to blame for accidental data leaks and breaches – it’s your firewall that is at fault. In order to prevent cyber attacks and ensure computer networks security for all devices and accounts in your marketing department, it’s important that you strengthen your firewall. You can do this by integrating a more comprehensive software firewall solution, but also by implementing a hardware firewall system to act as your primary layer of defense for your entire network.

Combined, your software and hardware firewalls will allow you to identify threats in the online world and control your entire network efficiently, but also help keep your marketers safe with various autonomous features that will fire up as soon as a threat reaches a high enough level.

Safeguarding User Accounts and Sensitive Information

Another security loophole has to do with all of those user accounts, tools, and software solutions your marketers are using to get the job done. Chances are that they are currently using various tools to make marketing campaigns, nurture relationships with customers, and analyze key marketing and customer experience KPIs. All of these tools can create security loopholes if you don’t strengthen their level of security through stronger password management, encryption, and by enabling two-factor authentication for all users.

Ensuring a Safe Collaborative Work Environment

Last but not least, keep in mind that more and more marketing processes are conducted in the online world, meaning that your marketers are nowadays collaborating almost exclusively via digital tools. This is more prevalent now than ever before as the COVID-19 pandemic continues to force companies to adopt remote work. If you want to keep all marketing data and projects safe, you need to choose a project management tool that uses the highest security measures available along with a unified communication system like VoIP that boasts advanced security features.

Wrapping Up

Your digital marketing department might be exposed to numerous privacy and security threats that are currently flying under your radar. Be sure to thwart any attempts of a data breach by implementing these solutions and elevating your cybersecurity.

The original version of this article was first published on V3Broadsuite.

Jacob Wilson is a business consultant, and an organizational psychologist, based in Brisbane. Passionate about marketing, social networks, and business in general. In his spare time, he writes a lot about new business strategies and digital marketing for Bizzmarkblog.com.
Latest posts by Jacob Wilson (see all)

Be the first to comment

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.


*