Pro Tip: Partnerships are critical in securing your martech stack

It seems we can’t make it more than a couple of weeks without hearing about a major company that’s suffered a major incident or breach, but for the second year in a row, the 2019 Martech Salary Survey shows that both data privacy/compliance reviews and security reviews were at the bottom of the responsibilities list for marketing technology and operations teams.

• IDC discovered that 40% of breaches originate with authorized users accessing unauthorized systems.
• In research conducted by Vanson Bourne, IT professionals rank marketing among the most likely to operate in an insecure manner.
• According to Gartner, by 2020, 100% BODs for large enterprises will expect updates on cybersecurity and tech risk.

As marketing technologists we can do better, but not alone. 

Establish a process for working across teams

Setting the stage for partnership may be time-consuming, but the outcome will serve as the bedrock of your partnership. Collaborative procedures help manage new technology requests more effectively and create a forum to learn from each other. Martech teams become better security stewards and serve as advocates for IT teams when working with marketing stakeholders.

Processes will differ by company, but here’s an idea to get started: 

• Marketing identifies a business need and submits a request with the “what” and “why” to the martech team 
• Martech/IT teams review the request together to determine business priority, resource sizing and IT scope 
• Output is provided to marketing leadership for prioritization 
• Procurement teams work to provide vendors for a proof of concept 
• Work with security to assess risk associated with vendor; recommendation provided to IT 
• Upon IT and security approval, IT and martech teams coordinate a plan to implement the technology 
• Martech and IT teams work closely throughout development, testing, implementation, onboarding and ongoing maintenance. 

Create a security culture driven by business requirements

Partnering with IT and security teams before purchasing new tech can help you secure your martech stack, ensure safe implementations and integrations, enable productivity and save your company from expensive privacy regulation violations. If you’re not sure whether or not your stack is safe, it’s time to find your friends in IT and security.

Pro Tip is a special feature for marketers in our community to share a specific tactic others can use to elevate their performance. You can submit your own here.

Opinions expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Marketing Land. Staff authors are listed here.

About The Author

Jorge Garcia

A lifetime learner and an innate problem-solver, Jorge Garcia found his home in the marketing technology industry. His 10-plus years in sales, sales management, program management, marketing analytics, and marketing operations roles with large organizations have prepared him for the unique mix of problems a marketing technologist faces. He hopes his energy and zeal for technology will attract fellow martech enthusiasts looking to push the industry forward. Jorge is a senior manager of marketing technology at Akamai Technologies, a Cambridge-based company that secures and delivers digital experiences for the world's largest companies. His natural curiosity for improvement opportunities and passion for discovering innovative solutions means that in a given week he might perform a preliminary security assessment, present tech strategy to leadership, facilitate an integration review, and build a sync architecture all before Wednesday!