Marketing is almost entirely digital these days, and the average marketing platform collects and stores mind-boggling amounts of data. From visitor tracking to deciphering intent data, marketing (and sales by extension) are some of the most data-driven portions of an organization.

Yet, few marketers pay attention to data security and think of it as an IT task. In technical terms, security is an IT task. However, data security is primarily driven by coherent user actions and marketers are not exempt from this.

Poor data handling and security practices can pose serious risks to organizations. Here are four reasons why marketers must prioritize data security right now.

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Build trust in datasets

Marketing decisions are rooted in data and depend on the quality of the datasets a company has. While marketers are not data scientists, they must be aware of the practices that go into collecting data and ensuring its quality.

Without this knowledge, marketers will miss nuance and context in their datasets. For instance, a marketer might be unaware that their platform has accidentally combined data from separate user cohorts due to poor definitions during the data collection phase, leading to incorrect conclusions.

Data security plays an important role in these processes. While poor data schemas and formatting errors sabotage analysis, poor security can render it obsolete. For instance, a data breach might lead to corrupted datasets, ensuring any marketing analysis is completely worthless.

A big reason for this is: Marketers wouldn’t trust their data anymore. Parsing through every data point and ensuring it is valid is an impractical exercise. It’s far better to ensure foolproof security and back it up with the right data handling practices (such as ensuring encryption, masking, etc.) The result is an analysis you can trust.

Preserves brand image

One of the biggest fallouts from improper data security is the occurrence of ransomware attacks. Again, marketers do not handle the details of handling such attacks; however, they do have to deal with its fallout. For example, a company that experiences a ransomware attack has almost certainly had its customer data revealed to the public.

Such data exposures are embarrassing and cause customers to lose trust in a company. Why would anyone give such companies their data ever again? From a marketing perspective, asking people to enter their emails and names in a gated form is unlikely to produce results after suffering a ransomware attack.

While security teams handle the technical realities of cybersecurity, marketers must ensure they train themselves to recognize telltale signs of a potential breach. For instance, phishing remains one of the most effective ways for a malicious attacker to break into a network.

How many marketers can truly claim to have studied phishing techniques and spot a potential phish? Given the demands of their job, few marketers spend time understanding basic security principles. Furthermore, marketing is a remote job these days.

Following basic security practices such as using secure connections, VPNs, and protecting sensitive data on personal devices is essential, if not mandatory. Fail to do so, and marketers could find themselves picking up the pieces after a ransomware or security breach.

Identifies potential vulnerabilities

A good data security program identifies potential issues quickly and mitigates them. For instance, continuous security validation is a staple in most security programs. This feature repeatedly tests a system for weaknesses and fixes them before an attacker discovers them.

From a marketing perspective, understanding which datasets are highly risky compared to ones carrying less risk is essential. For example, customer financial data is highly sensitive. Datasets containing names and emails are also sensitive but are unlikely to cause ruin in case of a breach.

Most marketers handle these sensitive datasets without understanding the business risks associated with them. Classifying data according to business is a good way to preserve awareness of good data handling practices.

For instance, knowledge of business risks connected to the breach of a dataset will prevent marketers from downloading it to their personal devices. A good security program will identify behaviors such as these quickly, helping marketers understand how they ought to handle sensitive data, and preserving the reputation of their business.

More transparency

Marketing agencies are a huge portion of the marketing and sales landscape. These agencies share and pull a lot of data from their clients and into dashboards used for internal reporting. Good data security principles will ensure these datasets remain private, calming customers and giving agencies more data they need to deliver results.

Sharing data securely also helps agencies deliver transparent workflows to their clients. Clients can log into dashboards and view the status of their jobs, tasks to be assigned, and issues to tackle. Good data security practices ensure this happens, boosting an agency’s business, as a result.

While cybersecurity is complex, agencies need follow just a few basic data handling principles to ensure their clients’ data is protected. For example, ensuring proper access to client folders is a basic step that ensures unauthorized entities cannot view sensitive data.

Data security is a necessity for marketers

Given the vast amounts of data marketers handle, ensuring data security is critical. The reasons in this article should spur marketers to ensure top-notch data security in their workflows, giving their business a boost, as a result.

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