Digital marketing: cyber security risk

Every organisation has to accept the risk of a security breach or a cyber-attack. This risk has moved from “if” to “when”, no matter the size or purpose of your organisation is it inevitable you will be subject to an attack or an event.

A cyber event or an attack is; a malicious or accidental event to your IT systems, data or technology.

If you work in the digital marketing sector this risk is even more prevalent. Your entire organisation operates digitally, and you are responsible for providing secure services to your clients. If the worst happens to you or your client this can be unrecoverable;

Loss of ability to operate.
Loss of reputation.
Financial Penalties.
Failure to win new business.

Proofpoint; Earlier this year, a leading cybersecurity and compliance company, released its eighth annual State of the Phish report, which showed the results of UK survey respondents for 2022;

96% experienced at least one successful phishing attack (up 5%).
82% faced at least one email-based ransomware attack (down 2%).
86% faced one or more business email compromise (BEC) attack (up 6%).
82% dealt with at least one ransomware infection (up 4%).

Surviving an event or an attack

With any risk, you have 3 decisions to make, accept, mitigate or transfer. Mitigation covers how you reduce your risk to prevent attack.

The secret to surviving an attack is to prepare for it. This is not as complex as you might think it is.

First, preparing a Business Continuity Plan (BCP) and a Disaster Recovery Plan will ensure will be ready to act if you suffer from an attack.

Second, prevention is the best form of defence. So complete risk assessments and action plans are the best way to identify risk and mitigate this. This can be done through the IASME Cyber Essentials and Cyber Assurance Certifications.

Education is key to your defence, and given that email-based attacks are expected to continue to dominate the threat landscape, your employees are one of your strongest defences.

More and more of our customers also contact us as cyber and information security certifications are becoming expected, not just for public sector and large tender opportunities.

We have designed some bespoke packages to allow all organisations to achieve assurances that their IT systems, data and technology are secure.