Why consumer products CMOs should care about cyber risk

CMOs and cyber risk

While cyber risk has typically been the concern of chief information officers, chief information security officers, and chief technology officers, the time has likely come for CMOs to also focus on cyber risk. CMOs traditionally have been responsible for creating their company’s brand image while building loyalty and consumer trust. But couple today’s digital marketing environment with the constant threat of cyber breaches and the result could be widening the CMO focus to include protecting a company’s image.

Cyber risk can be mitigated with the right safeguards in place. Before investing in a new marketing technology, CMOs could benefit from taking a more collaborative approach, engaging in deeper conversations with both senior leadership and their cybersecurity counterparts to increase their knowledge of cyber risk to ensure that marketing activities facilitated by innovative technologies are secure, vigilant, and resilient.

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Next steps for CMOs to mitigate cyber risk

To protect their companies and customers from cyber risk, CMOs should maintain an open dialogue with their senior leadership. Here are some tips to keep in mind:

• Be secure: Take a measured, risk-based approach to what is secured and how to secure it. This includes managing cyber risks as a team. One way to increase preparedness is by building cyber risk management strategies in the enterprise and emerging technologies as they are deployed.
• Be vigilant: Monitor systems, applications, people, and the outside environment to detect incidents more effectively. This includes developing situational awareness and threat intelligence to understand harmful behavior and top risks to the organization, and actively monitoring the dynamic threat landscape.
• Be resilient: Be prepared for incidents and decrease their business impact by improving organizational preparedness to address cyber incidents before they escalate. This also includes capturing lessons learned, improving security controls, and returning to business as usual as quickly as possible.

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Endnotes

1. Deloitte CMO Survey, https://cmosurvey.org/, February 2017.

2. Emarketer, “Social media spending,” https://www.emarketer.com/Report/US-Ad-Spending-eMarketers-Updated-Estimates-Forecast-2017/2002134, accessed in July 2017.

3. Deloitte CMO Survey, https://cmosurvey.org/, February 2017.

4. Forbes, “How Can CMOs Make Sense of Big Data?” https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnrampton /2015/06/21/how-can-cmos-make-sense-ofbig-data/, last modified June 21, 2015.

5. IDC, “Worldwide Big Data and Business Analytics Revenues Forecast to Reach $187 Billion in 2019, According to IDC,” https://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUS41306516, last modified May 23, 2016.

6. Deloitte CMO Survey, https://cmosurvey.org/, February 2017.

7. Business Insider, “National Retail Federation estimates 8-12% US e-commerce growth in 2017,” http://www.businessinsider.com/national-retail-federation-estimates-8-12-us-e-commerce-growth-in-2017-2017-2, last modified February 10, 2017.

8. Emarketer, “mobile ad spending,” https://numbers-na1.emarketer.com/584b26021403070290f93a57/5851918a0626310a2c186a4d, accessed July 2017.

9. Wiredseo, “2017 mobile marketing statistics (trends, predictions, & mobile strategy),” https://www.wiredseo.com/mobile-marketingstatistics-2017/, last modified April 1, 2017.

10. Deloitte CMO Survey, https://cmosurvey.org/, February 2017.

11. Forbes, “IDC Predicts CMOs Will Drive $32.3B In Marketing Technology Spending By 2018,” https://www.forbes.com/sites/louiscolumbus/2015/01/17/idc-predicts-cmos-will-drive-32-3b-in-marketing-technology-spending-by-2018/#5cfc4d41f78b, last modified January 17, 2015.

12. CRM Success, “For CMOs & Marketing,” http://www.qiem.com/for-cmos-marketing.php, accessed July 2017.