Cyber security is no longer just a CTO problem

Cyber security is no longer just a CTO problem

At the advent of the information technology industry, companies of all types began employing IT teams to take care of technology and digital data concerns. Soon, many executives realized they also needed someone to lead their IT teams and be the authority to make all technology decisions. That’s how the position of Chief Technology Officer (CTO) was born.

As the digital landscape changed and grew, CTOs faced challenges of all sorts. The biggest challenge, and the most threatening to business stability and productivity, was the rapid expansion of cyber-attacks. It became clear to CTOs, and their counterpart, the Chief Information Officer (CIO), that protecting a company against these types of attacks would be a sophisticated, but necessary, process. So as hackers grew in numbers, so did the companies providing cyber defenses.

These days, cyber security is often a given. No company’s IT department, especially one that deals with sensitive customer information, would dream of not encrypting files or using firewalls. While many cyber security companies still offer these basic protection tools, many have matured to fight even the most aggressive hackers.

This evolution of cyber security requires intelligent marketing that reaches beyond the CTO. It’s not just the CTO and CIOs who need convincing anymore. Cyber security, with such a presently wide breadth of effect, touches every aspect of business, calling for all decision makers and employees to be informed, educated and trained on company security practices.

Marketing beyond the CTO can improve conversions and effectiveness of a security solution.

Digital threats are on everyone’s minds in today’s seemingly fragile cyber environment. The annualChapman University survey about what Americans fear most revealed that, in 2015, citizens fear cyber terrorism just below government corruption. This broad unease of a prevalent issue may be alarming to the mass public, but is a good sign for the understanding and cooperation to mitigate the problem. Fear is an excellent motivator in encouraging people to take necessary measures for security.

Cyber security is not just the concern of a company’s IT team or higher office. It should be on the mind of all employees. Having every worker trained and informed about keeping information secure and what defenses are in place help fight threats from all angles.

The data breach at the health insurance conglomerate Anthem this past year was caused by a number of factors and conducted by outside hackers, but employees were a key piece of the story. It was through imitation company websites where employees were directed through email to enter account numbers and passwords that hackers accessed the personal information of 80 million customers. It was a non-security employee who noticed his database credentials were being used to run a query he had not originated. Without his vigilance, the breach may have affected even more people and continued even longer.

If the Anthem employees had been properly educated about keeping data secure, a huge breach could have been prevented. It is the smallest actions and efforts that can keep data in the right hands with the right safeguards in place. What some companies haven’t yet grasped is that every employee has an obligation to do his part in defending networks against attacks.

Marketing cyber security involves influencing everyone at a company from the biggest decision makers to the lowest level employees. Changing the way the business world thinks about cyber security calls for intelligent strategies and appealing to customer logic.

It is more than a CTO’s duty to find and implement the best defenses. Because cyber security affects a wider range of business operations, it is valuable to send cyber security marketing messages beyond the IT department. CEOs and entry-level workers all face the same burden of protecting digital data.