Vectors Of Attack
Why Marketing teams are on the frontlines of Cyber Warfare and what to do about it.
The full article includes juicy details on how specific breaches and techniques that may compromise marketing teams and their systems.
The nature of the information in this article is sensitive so we won’t publish it here but are happy to supply on request – simply email us and we’ll send you the full article.
Customer data is a hot commodity for cyber criminals – who use it to enrich cybercrime opportunities including identity theft, phishing, and general scamming.
Beyond Cyber-crime the proposed changes to the Australian Privacy Laws and significant fines for breaches are examples of how the government is starting to take data protection and cyber risk more seriously.
Data breaches are happening more frequently and with greater impact, causing significant damage to brand and reputations.
While we won’t deal specifically with Privacy issues in this article – there are aspects of risk that relate to complying with the Privacy Laws.
Given companies are typically tight-lipped about the specifics of these breaches, we often assume that they are the result of complex and sophisticated hacking – the truth is many of these breaches often occur due to preventable security practices and negligence.
The perfect way to ruin a CEO’s day is to leave a public facing API unsecured that kindly returns all customer data (looking at you Optus) – no sophistication just poor controls.
Marketing and digital teams continue to play a central role in dealing with customer data, so it is important those teams understand what the risks are.
Why should marketing teams care about this?
Firstly, security is everyone’s problem.
Secondly, marketing teams are now the gatekeepers of customer data, managing it across a variety of platforms and services.
While larger enterprises may have the benefit of robust cybersecurity teams, smaller businesses may not have the same resources to protect themselves.
Even in a larger business context, security teams may not always be aware of the profile of marketing services and only often have a light touch on governance or protection.
CMO’s and Marketing leaders are increasingly being responsible for greater areas of risk. And central to risk are ways, or vectors of attack that customer data can be attained you normally wouldn’t think about.
Part of the issue is that cyber breaches often enable data sets to be collected – so you might only expose two or three bits of data for it to be linked to various other breaches that culminate in opportunities to leverage the data.
We’ve classified them into a framework with clear risks and tips on how to address the following:
Counter party risks including how agencies or partners could accidentally ruin your day.
Data leakage and how you might be accidentally broadcasting customer data in ways that make you say: “I didn’t know you could do that with our data?”
Poor data management practices opening up to risk through poor data controls
Internal risks that lead organisations to be their own worst enemy
Why should you trust us on these matters? We’ve had the pleasure of protecting millions of Australian customers through our privacy and Martech work for major brands.