Effective Cybersecurity Marketing Strategy to Standout from the Crowd

Cybersecurity Marketing Strategy
Cyber-attacks have become more sophisticated and advanced as the rise in connectivity brought an increase in security gaps. Better connectivity also has led attackers make to create advanced tools making their attacks more sophisticated.

This certainly makes businesses invest more in information security to bridge the gaps. However, most businesses and organizations do not realize the need for it. This is due to the absence of threat awareness among the customers. A major challenge that cybersecurity service providers face is around cybersecurity marketing. Another challenge they face is competition. Businesses do not prioritize cybersecurity as an essential aspect, so marketing security solutions become even more challenging.

However, the cybersecurity product market has grown over the years, especially during this pandemic period. Although the market is growing, it needs a sound cybersecurity marketing strategy to reach actual prospects. The strategy should also aim to educate the prospects on its need, as many do not realize its necessity today.

Let us look into some of the tips for making a sound cybersecurity marketing strategy.


Cybersecurity Marketing Strategy


Especially during this period of the pandemic, cybersecurity solutions and services are facing much competition. Thus, you should have a properly and professionally designed cybersecurity marketing strategy to stand out from the crowd and reach out to top prospects.

As remote workplaces are necessary during this pandemic period, security breaches are also happening like ever before. This has made companies and individuals look for solid cybersecurity solutions and services. However, as the competition is high, your success in reaching out to these companies in time depends upon the unique cybersecurity marketingstrategy you set up.

Below are some tips to make your cybersecurity marketing strategy appealing and robust enough to attract more clients.


Know your Audience


Regarding cybersecurity marketing, understanding your audience is crucial. It is considered the first step towards creating a compelling marketing strategy. Creating marketing personas will make you understand your audience better. Personas give you a picture of your ideal customer, which is fictional. This will also give you practical insights towards which strategy and channels to be used while communicating with them. Even creating a persona of your ideal customer will provide insights about how to communicate with them.

You also have to decide whom do you address in a particular company. Based on the roles, CTO, CEO, CISO, risk managers, CFO, you can make different personas. This is because all of these professionals in companies may be facing different challenges in their pace of work. Understanding them thoroughly will surely help you make a compelling cybersecurity marketing strategy.

According to Matthew Fisch, a cybersecurity consultant, and SVP sales at Magnetude Consulting,

“I’d follow up after in-person interactions with key executives by giving them my GDPR white paper, which they found very useful. Now they know me and trust that I know their pain points on this subject. That makes it a lot easier to let them know what my company does and how our products can help them.”

Push them down the Funnel with E-mail Marketing


For cybersecurity solution selling, awareness and knowledge are natural obstacles. This can make a potential lead take a good amount of time to make a decision, even demand a demo or meet a sales representative of your company. Therefore, your cybersecurity marketing strategy can make a difference by engaging them with your brand and taking them down to the sales funnel. The best way to do it is through e-mail marketing. Your email message should be personalized.

However, the e-mails you send to your prospects should be attractive, informative, and educational. If they do not find your e-mails worthwhile, they may likely delete your emails and block you as they may have a lot of emails in their inbox every day. Therefore, you should be having a creative mind and a good idea of the types of content that can be sent via email to your prospect.

Case studies, reports, and e-books are ideal content types that can educate people about present cybersecurity issues and its need today. Apart from these content forms, you can also focus on sending videos, which would educate them about the importance of cybersecurity. Whatever content yousend to your prospects as part of your cybersecurity marketing strategy, do not forget to link to your blog posts about recent attacks and the latest updates in the industry. You can also include attractive offers in your e-mail, such as free trials that quickly make the prospect sign up.

Urge them to Make it a Priority


As mentioned in the introduction, most customers do not find or are not aware of the urgency of cybersecurity. Thus, as a cybersecurity product and service provider, you should make the effort of creating a sense of emergency among your prospects as part of your cybersecurity marketing strategy. Furthermore, you should take it as a challenge to convince them to take it as a priority in this modern technology-driven world.

There can be many reasons why they do not prioritize cybersecurity in their business process. First, it may be because they are giving importance to their core work. In addition, it can be due to complacency, or maybe they are not aware of the threat. Finally, the expense can be another reason that they do not prioritize cybersecurity.

However, you have to focus on making your messaging right to them. Instead of scaring them with threatening messages, focus on educating them with ample examples from real life.


Summing up


The biggest challenge to cybersecurity marketing is that most prospects are not aware of the necessity of cybersecurity. This is because they are ignorant of the threat businesses are facing. Thus, the first step is to educate them about the urgency of it. Therefore, your cybersecurity marketing strategy should start with this first step.

Apart from this, personalized messages to the decision-makers will help you go forward with your strategy. Sending messages to them continuously will educate them about its need and can push them down the sales funnel successfully.

Frequently Asked Questions


What is the prominent challenge cybersecurity marketers face today?

There are a lot of challenges cybersecurity marketers face today. One of the main challenges is that most clients are not aware of the threat they will face in their business process online. Thus, educating them with the need and urgency of it is a significant challenge for marketers.

What are some of the tactics cybersecurity marketers use?

Cybersecurity marketers need an effective cybersecurity marketing strategy. Email marketing, webinars, content marketing, and paid campaigns can be included as effective tactics in the strategy.

Spotlight

INSIDESecure

INSIDE Secure (Euronext Paris – INSD) is at the heart of security solutions for mobile and connected devices, providing software, silicon IP, tools and know-how needed to protect customers’ transactions, content, applications, and communications. With its deep security expertise and experience, the company delivers products having advanced and differentiated technical capabilities that span the entire range of security requirement levels to serve the demanding markets of network security, IoT security, content & application protection, mobile payment & banking. INSIDE Secure’s technology protects solutions for a broad range of customers including service providers, content distributors, security system integrators, device vendors and semiconductor manufacturers.

OTHER ARTICLES
Data Security

Protection vs Privilege

Article | April 11, 2022

As of May 2023, 39% percent of workers in the UK work from home at some point during their week. Whilst understandable, the hybrid-working environment continues to pose more risks to organisations and their data. As more devices are accessed beyond the confines of the corporate network, businesses must account for the inherent risks presented by insecure or non-existent endpoint control. As users of these devices have more administrative control, and without the constant presence of IT services, the door is left open for increased phishing, ransomware and malware attacks. A daunting 88% of data breaches are now caused by employee error. Just earlier this month, the genealogy company 23andMe confirmed that its data had been compromised in an attack from hackers who claimed to have accessed millions of data points from accounts by taking advantage of users login credentials. The problem with this is that the users are not the root of the issue. The concern comes not only from employees, but from the number of endpoints being accessed from multiple locations, and the lack of control over the access and privileges that these devices have. A frightening statistic revealed in a study from Forbes, showed that 23% of UK and US small businesses used no form of endpoint security, and that a further 57% simply believe they won’t be targeted by cyber-attacks. The reason this is so concerning is that cybersecurity companies have reported a 20% increase in victims of such attacks just in the last year. These attacks not only put company and customer data at risk but can also result in a strain on IT services and leave users without the systems and tools essential for productivity. Preventing unlimited access One of the ways that attacks break through endpoints and escape into an organisation's network is by exploiting local admin rights on end-users' workstations. Those local admin rights are handy for the user. For example, they can install a new printer driver or update an application plug-in without calling the IT help desk. But they can also be abused to install malware or configure the computer to make an attack easier. It could be easy to remove those local admin rights or the shadow user account on the workstations with those elevated permissions. But that will frustrate end-users and increase the load on the help desk. The key issue here, is the concept of privilege. Users often need the privilege to elevate their devices by running an administrator account in order to gain access to, and update applications. Unfortunately, this greatly increases risk as these elevated administrator accounts are much more attractive to hackers for this exact reason - their access to more lucrative data. It has been reported that 70% of all data breaches are targeted at privileged accounts, which is especially alarming when taking into account the fact that 90% of IT security professionals have said that their organisations’ users have more privilege than is necessary. The issue for many companies arises in finding the balance between the users’ access to local admin rights and their productivity. More open access to the admin rights makes things easier and convenient for the users but opens the door to security risks with more endpoints to target. A study by the Ponemon Institute showed that 73% of organisations believed that threats to their endpoints had significantly increased, and that a staggering 80% of organisations that had been compromised by cyber-attacks did not know what type of attack they had been subjected to. The need for a more effective and efficient security measure is clear. Endpoint privilege management (EPM) oversees and governs the privilege of network devices. It completely removes the need for users to have administrator accounts on the devices they use, whilst still enabling them to have elevated access to certain applications. EPM only elevates approved applications and provides the users with a clear audit list of those which have been approved. Privilege to protect Whilst not a universal fix, the implementation of EPM, for example, can help alleviate the risks and reinforce a culture of security within organisations. It is understandable to be cautious when faced with words and phrases such as “approved applications” or “removing administrator rights”, but EPM is not about limiting your users’ experience or productivity. EPM does not forbid or remove access to applications. The IT team can grant approved users’ permission to run specific applications with elevated permissions for a limited period, to carry out specific actions. Users can then access what they need to, while IT retains visibility over all actions in case activity needs to be stopped, or incidents need to be investigated at a later date. If permissions need to be granted on an individual basis, for each user and application, IT will be buried under an avalanche of requests – so EPM tools will allow rules and policies to be created and then applied at scale. Users can do the work they need with few calls to the Help Desk. IT gets fewer interruptions and can focus on more valuable work. Auditors can see who had access to which applications and logs show the actual users, not an arbitrary administrator account. Endpoint privilege management is vital to any organisation's cybersecurity strategy, not only to manage and control access to sensitive data and resources but minimise the chance of a data breach. EPM also plays a crucial role in ensuring compliance with industry standards and regulations to avoid the legal liabilities that may ensue should a breach occur.

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The NIS2 cyber security rules are coming – are you ready?

Article | March 4, 2022

The EU NIS cyber security regulations are evolving for 2024 – and if you’re not currently aware of how they’ll apply to your organisation, now is the time to get up to speed with the likely requirements. Not only is the directive being tightened, but an extended range of healthcare and related organisations will be added to the list of ‘critical entities’ that must comply. These include certain medical device manufacturers, pharmaceutical companies, and organisations that carry out R&D. The Network and Information Systems (NIS) standards were set up in 2016 to protect essential services – such as water, energy, healthcare, transport and digital infrastructure – from online cyberattacks. The updated legislation, NIS2, will have stricter rules and reporting requirements, and higher penalties for non-compliance. They will apply to medium-sized and large businesses that operate within one or more EU countries. Those based only in the UK can’t sit back, however, as the original NIS regulations will still apply as part of British law. What’s more, a UK version of the rules is coming very soon, and it’s likely that the framework will closely resemble the EU’s. What will the requirements cover? There are a number of cyber risk management measures that all organisations that come under the scope of NIS2 will be required to put in place. For instance, they will need to conduct regular security assessments and risk analyses, adopt incident response and handling plans, and appoint a chief information security officer (CISO), among other obligations. The new directive will streamline and strengthen incident reporting requirements. Entities must notify regulators of any incident that has compromised data, or had a significant impact on the provision of their services, for instance by causing severe operational disruption or financial loss. Applying information system security policies and business continuity plans will form part of the obligations, as will conducting cyber security testing, and training for all staff. The use of multi-factor authentication (MFA) and encryption, where appropriate, will also be mandated. There is plenty of focus within the directive on the cornerstones of cyber security best practice – in particular the proper control of administrator-level account credentials, privileged access, and endpoints, all of which are prime targets for attackers. Under NIS2, organisations are being separated into ‘critical’ and ‘important’ entities. It’s important to determine which category yours will fall under, as requirements are different for each. The third party threat will also be addressed in NIS2 through the pulling in of managed service providers (MSPs) to the list of ‘critical entities’, with the aim of keeping digital supply chains secure. MSPs are often granted privileged access to clients’ corporate systems and networks, which creates security risks. What are the consequences of non-compliance? Organisations that come under the regulations’ purview will be subject to random checks, regular security audits, on-site inspections and off-site supervisions. For those found to be in breach, sanctions could include warnings, temporary suspension of certain activities, and temporary prohibition to exercise certain managerial functions. Financial penalties could be as high as 10 million Euros or 2% of an organisation’s global turnover – whichever is higher. What steps should healthcare organisations take now? Organisations should take action to establish whether the EU or UK NIS2 regulations will apply to them and what their responsibilities will be. Having identified any gaps in existing cyber security processes, policies and practices, they must determine what changes need making to address them. As a priority, they must review their incident response plans, and incident management and reporting procedures. It’s also a good idea to begin assessing the security posture of partners and third parties in the supply chain, and incorporating relevant security requirements into contracts. Given the framework’s focus on protecting privileged admin accounts, organisations should implement controls that will limit the number of staff members who hold these powerful credentials. Implementing privileged access management (PAM) will allow IT to control who is granted access to which systems, applications and services, for how long, and what they can do while they’re using them. Preparing for the introduction of the EU NIS2 regulations should be considered as more than just a compliance exercise. By meeting the strengthened requirements, healthcare organisations will be building a foundation of resilience that protects them, their customers, and the essential services they provide.

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Data Security, Platform Security, Software Security

Security by Sector: Improving Quality of Data and Decision-Making a Priority for Credit Industry

Article | March 29, 2023

The subject of how information security impacts different industry sectors is an intriguing one. For example, how does the finance industry fare in terms of information security compared to the health sector, or the entertainment business? Are there some sectors that face greater cyber-threats and risks than others? Do some do a better job of keeping data secure, and if so, how and why?A new study of credit management professionals has revealed that improving the quality of data and decision-making will be a top priority for the credit industry in the next three years. The research, from Equifax Ingnite in collaboration with Coleman Parkes, takes a deep dive into the views of credit management pros across retail, banking, finance and debt management/recovery sectors.

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3 Trends in Data Privacy Breach Laws That Will Carry Over to 2020

Article | February 12, 2020

During 2019, new privacy laws were introduced, and many current laws evolved in the United States and across the global landscape. With the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in full effect, we saw expensive fines levied upon companies that fell victim to data privacy breaches. As we move into a new year, probably the biggest takeaway from 2019 is that being proactive and having a data privacy strategy in place is important to help mitigate the risk of a data privacy breach. The regulatory landscape continues to evolve as states and countries actively pass new expanded requirements for privacy and cybersecurity regulations. While laws in the U.S., like the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), are getting significant attention, many other states and countries are actively amending their breach notification laws to include tighter restrictions.

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Spotlight

INSIDESecure

INSIDE Secure (Euronext Paris – INSD) is at the heart of security solutions for mobile and connected devices, providing software, silicon IP, tools and know-how needed to protect customers’ transactions, content, applications, and communications. With its deep security expertise and experience, the company delivers products having advanced and differentiated technical capabilities that span the entire range of security requirement levels to serve the demanding markets of network security, IoT security, content & application protection, mobile payment & banking. INSIDE Secure’s technology protects solutions for a broad range of customers including service providers, content distributors, security system integrators, device vendors and semiconductor manufacturers.

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Canadian Federal Government Choose Netskope as Preferred Vendor

Netskope | September 11, 2023

Netskope, an industry-leading secure access service edge (SASE) provider, has announced that it has been chosen as the preferred cloud access security broker vendor for the Canadian Federal Government under the cybersecurity procurement vehicle (CSPV) of Shared Services Canada (SSC). The objective of the SSC cloud access security broker CSPV is to provide government users with secure access to cloud-based applications, including all software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications, regardless of their location. The Government of Canada (GC) selected Netskope after a competitive bidding process for a commercially available cloud access security broker service to fulfill its business requirements across various government organizations and agencies. The cloud access security broker service aims to facilitate the continued adoption, utilization, and delivery of SaaS cloud services by GC departments. The cloud access security broker service will improve the security posture of GC applications, services, and data as they are migrated to public cloud environments, permitting complete visibility and monitoring of GC cloud environments to detect, prevent, and respond rapidly to cyber threats; and ensuring the privacy, confidentiality, and protection of GC data in accordance with GC policies. As an integral part of Netskope Intelligent Security Service Edge (SSE), Netskope's market-leading cloud access security broker enables agencies to detect and manage the usage of cloud applications rapidly, irrespective of whether they are managed or unmanaged, and safeguard sensitive data from being stolen by malicious cybercriminals or risky insiders who have compromised the technology environment. A cloud access security broker is a cloud-based or on-premises security policy enforcement point situated between cloud service providers and consumers to combine and insert enterprise security policies when cloud-based resources are accessed. With a cloud access security broker solution, agencies can manage the unintentional or unauthorized transfer of sensitive data between cloud application instances while expediting security workflows with simple policy controls and incident response management. Paul Tanasi, Federal Regional Manager, Netskope, said, With the hybrid workforce becoming the new normal, Canadian government departments and agencies are relying more and more on giving their users direct-to-cloud access to SaaS applications and to web applications in general. [Source – Cision PR Newswire] Paul Tanasi further mentioned that there is a requirement to ensure these users' security and regain some of the visibility and control they were accustomed to when everyone worked from the office. A solution is required to tackle risks associated with cloud services, enforce security policies, and adhere to regulations, mainly when dealing with cloud services that are located outside their network perimeter and beyond their direct control. Netskope's CASB solution would offer the capability to adopt cloud applications and services confidently without compromising security or performance. About Netskope Netskope, an industry leader in SASE, assists organizations in implementing zero trust principles and AI/ML innovations to safeguard data and defend against cyber threats. The company's platform offers optimized access and real-time security for devices, people, and data, regardless of their location. Netskope assists customers in mitigating risk, accelerating application performance, and gaining unparalleled visibility into cloud, web, and private application activity. Thousands of clients rely on Netskope and its robust NewEdge network to combat evolving threats, technology shifts, new risks, organizational and network changes, and others.

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Oracle Attempts to Design New Open Network and Data Security Standard

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Oracle to participate in an industry-wide initiative to design a new open network and data security standard. Oracle and Applied Invention are assisting to developing and promoting a novel network and data-centric security standard to tackle distributed cloud deployment challenges. This standard will enable organizations to protect their data throughout its entire lifecycle without requiring modifications to their distributed cloud environments' underlying architecture. Oracle, one of the world's largest database management companies, announced that it will participate in an industry-wide initiative to design a new open network and data security standards that will assist organizations in protecting their data in distributed IT environments. Oracle will collaborate with Applied Invention, a significant technology provider, and other industry leaders, including Nomura Research Institute, Ltd. (NRI), a global leader in consulting and system solutions. This new standard will enable networks to enforce shared security policies collectively, thereby augmenting the security architecture organizations already employ without requiring modifications to existing applications and networks. Oracle plans to launch the Oracle Zero-Trust Packet Routing Platform, based on the new standard, to support this new initiative. This platform will assist organizations in preventing illegal access or use of their data without imposing additional obstacles on legitimate activities. Executive Vice President of Security and Developer Platforms at Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, Mahesh Thiagarajan, said, Over the last 20 years, the cybersecurity industry has produced many incremental changes, but we need a fundamentally novel approach to protect our data in the increasingly complex cloud era. Organizations require a way to describe their data security policies in one place where they can be easily understood and audited, and they need a way to make sure those policies are enforced across their entire computing infrastructure, including their clouds. [Source – Cision PR Newswire] As the adoption of cloud technology rises and IT landscapes become more intricate with distributed cloud deployments, organizations face escalating challenges in safeguarding their data using conventional methods and tools. For example, many existing systems necessitate security teams to orchestrate disparate solutions across various facets, including database, application, network, and identity security. This complexity is further compounded when applied across diverse environments. Ensuring seamless collaboration among these solutions becomes a formidable task due to the dynamic and independent changes in applications, environments, and user profiles. Additionally, current security systems demand extensive configurations to accurately distinguish between different user categories, such as full-time employees and contractors, without compromising security or restricting access. Research Vice President of Cloud and Edge Infrastructure Services at IDC, Dave McCarthy, said, The new standard Oracle develop has the potential to change all of that by adding a unified layer of security on top of existing solutions. Building data protection policies into the network itself will assist users get the access they require while ensuring the data remains secure behind the scenes. [Source – Cision PR Newswire] Oracle and Applied Invention are assisting in designing and promoting a novel security standard, focusing on network and data-centric security, which aims to tackle these challenges. This innovative standard will empower organizations to safeguard their data across its entire lifecycle, including distributed cloud environments. To accomplish this, the standard will implement an intent-based security policy that is designed to be understandable, auditable, and interpretable by humans. This intent-driven approach will be put into practice at the network layer, ensuring that every data transmission contains authenticated attributes concerning the sender, receiver, and the nature of the data in transit.

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Canadian Federal Government Choose Netskope as Preferred Vendor

Netskope | September 11, 2023

Netskope, an industry-leading secure access service edge (SASE) provider, has announced that it has been chosen as the preferred cloud access security broker vendor for the Canadian Federal Government under the cybersecurity procurement vehicle (CSPV) of Shared Services Canada (SSC). The objective of the SSC cloud access security broker CSPV is to provide government users with secure access to cloud-based applications, including all software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications, regardless of their location. The Government of Canada (GC) selected Netskope after a competitive bidding process for a commercially available cloud access security broker service to fulfill its business requirements across various government organizations and agencies. The cloud access security broker service aims to facilitate the continued adoption, utilization, and delivery of SaaS cloud services by GC departments. The cloud access security broker service will improve the security posture of GC applications, services, and data as they are migrated to public cloud environments, permitting complete visibility and monitoring of GC cloud environments to detect, prevent, and respond rapidly to cyber threats; and ensuring the privacy, confidentiality, and protection of GC data in accordance with GC policies. As an integral part of Netskope Intelligent Security Service Edge (SSE), Netskope's market-leading cloud access security broker enables agencies to detect and manage the usage of cloud applications rapidly, irrespective of whether they are managed or unmanaged, and safeguard sensitive data from being stolen by malicious cybercriminals or risky insiders who have compromised the technology environment. A cloud access security broker is a cloud-based or on-premises security policy enforcement point situated between cloud service providers and consumers to combine and insert enterprise security policies when cloud-based resources are accessed. With a cloud access security broker solution, agencies can manage the unintentional or unauthorized transfer of sensitive data between cloud application instances while expediting security workflows with simple policy controls and incident response management. Paul Tanasi, Federal Regional Manager, Netskope, said, With the hybrid workforce becoming the new normal, Canadian government departments and agencies are relying more and more on giving their users direct-to-cloud access to SaaS applications and to web applications in general. [Source – Cision PR Newswire] Paul Tanasi further mentioned that there is a requirement to ensure these users' security and regain some of the visibility and control they were accustomed to when everyone worked from the office. A solution is required to tackle risks associated with cloud services, enforce security policies, and adhere to regulations, mainly when dealing with cloud services that are located outside their network perimeter and beyond their direct control. Netskope's CASB solution would offer the capability to adopt cloud applications and services confidently without compromising security or performance. About Netskope Netskope, an industry leader in SASE, assists organizations in implementing zero trust principles and AI/ML innovations to safeguard data and defend against cyber threats. The company's platform offers optimized access and real-time security for devices, people, and data, regardless of their location. Netskope assists customers in mitigating risk, accelerating application performance, and gaining unparalleled visibility into cloud, web, and private application activity. Thousands of clients rely on Netskope and its robust NewEdge network to combat evolving threats, technology shifts, new risks, organizational and network changes, and others.

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