Do new marketing strategies increase cyber risks? This report argues that cyber breaches are leaving organizations vulnerable, but that such dangers are ignored by many CMOs.
Media scrutiny, public awareness and customer concern about cyber threats is increasing. That’s because personal data compromises, identity theft and Internet fraud are on the rise across every sector of business, public and consumer life. As a result, digital security has become an issue of growing importance with significant implications for the relationship between brands and their customers, suppliers, partners and investors.
There’s no question, multiplying challenges faced in today’s virtual enterprise, companies seek to secure and protect a distributed workforce, digitally dependent customers, at-risk supply chains, personally identifiable information (PII) and business continuity.
Deloitte notes that “newer marketing strategies are likely opening the door to cyber risk, leaving organizations vulnerable to cyber breaches. Such attacks have the potential to compromise not only a brand’s reputation, negatively impacting loyalty and consumer trust, but also a brand’s ability to grow by acquiring new customers who may avoid a company that’s experienced a breach.”
This is reinforced by a global outlook study by the CMO Council’s Getting It Done in 2021, which found that only 7% of 200 marketing leaders surveyed were concerned about brand safety and protection, despite greater investments in marketing automation.
This lack of concern seems to contradict the latest security economic indicators:
- Cybercrime is estimated to cost the world $10.5 trillion annually by 2025 (Cybersecurity Ventures)
- There were over 10 confirmed data breaches a day in 2020 (Varonis reports, 3,950 in 2020)
- The global average cost of a data breach is $3.86 million (IBM)
- An average of 4,800 websites a month are compromised with form-jacking code (Symantec)
- A business will fall victim to a ransomware attack every 11 seconds in 2021 (Herjavec Group)
- According to the FBI, phishing was the most common type of cybercrime in 2020 — and phishing incidents nearly doubled in frequency, from 114,702 in 2019, to 241,324 incidents in 2020.
A data breach can tear a company’s bottom line to shreds and tarnish its brand reputation for years.
Source: Neale-May, D. (2021, April 28). CMOs Need to Apply More Diligence to Cybersecurity Resilience. CMO Council.