Robust cybersecurity policies are crucial across all sectors. However, it’s an especially important consideration for B2B agencies who want to guard their reputation and ensure a positive client experience.
There are several important cybersecurity considerations to remember while handling sensitive client data and maintaining smooth, efficient operations to stay competitive.
In this post, we’ll take a closer look at how cybersecurity can affect how clients perceive your agency and some of the best ways to apply cybersecurity as part of effective reputation management for agencies.
Cybersecurity and the Risk to Your Reputation
Business leaders are increasingly well-informed about cybersecurity risks, and the value of having strong preventative measures to avoid these.
Decision-makers in your target audience are going to be very discerning about agencies’ track records when they’re deciding who to trust with the future of their website, and it’s crucial to understand how avoidable breaches can impact your brand’s equity.
Some of the most damaging ways a cyberattack can affect your agency’s reputation include:
Loss of Trust
Like any B2B entity, your capacity to protect clients’ sensitive data is a key predictor of how well your audience will trust you. If you suffer an avoidable data breach and fail to protect that sensitive data, it could lead to a major loss of trust and detrimental knock-on effects on your future business.
Figures published by Security Magazine showed that 66% of consumers in the US said they wouldn’t trust a company following a data breach, while 75% would consider severing ties with a brand completely in the aftermath of a cybersecurity issue.
If your agency isn’t using robust cybersecurity measures, it could lead to them taking their business to competitors who can demonstrate a stronger security policy.
Negative News Coverage
There are countless examples of cyberattacks and data breaches attracting negative media attention for the businesses involved. The bigger the data loss, the more damaging this kind of coverage tends to be.
This will not only erode existing customers’ trust in your agency but also undermine your marketing, making it harder to convince new clients that you can be trusted with their site.
Your operation may be small at the moment, and not receiving a lot of coverage in major industry news sites. However, the effect of small-scale negative media coverage following a cyberattack can still be extremely damaging to your reputation, taking the form of negative social media posts or public reviews.
It’s essential to bear this long-lasting effect in mind when reviewing your approach to cybersecurity and reputation management for agencies.
Damage to Employee and Candidate Morale
Seeing that senior decision-makers at their organisation have failed to protect the business’s clients can be hugely damaging to your team’s morale. This can not only cause employees to lose faith in executives’ decision-making but also raise concerns about how well you’re protecting their own personal data.
Aside from the people already working at your agency, major security breaches can hurt your ability to recruit new talent and achieve your business development goals.
The best candidates in your niche are likely to research organisations thoroughly when searching for their next position, and having the news of a cyberattack attached to your brand name could affect their decision to continue their application.
Best Cybersecurity Practices to Improve Your Reputation
Even if the quality of your services are among the best in your niche, backing this up with robust cybersecurity measures is essential for maintaining a positive reputation as an agency.
If you need to refresh your approach to cybersecurity and make sure you’re preserving your agency’s reputation as best as possible, here’s three important cybersecurity best practices to prioritize.
Be Honest About Your Capabilities
If growing your agency is a priority, you may be channelling your resources toward taking on progressively larger projects for larger clients.
Like many areas of your business, however, it’s important to make sure you’re not growing too fast by taking on more cybersecurity obligations than you can feasibly manage.
Onboarding clients whose own niche makes cybersecurity especially important, for example, those in the healthcare sector, or handling large databases, e.g. for email marketing campaigns, could call for more stringent cybersecurity measures than you can practically provide.
Offering services such as reseller hosting can often be an effective way to expand your cybersecurity capabilities as it provides 24/7 support from third-party experts and ensures you can keep up with client demands when managing large-scale projects.
Whether you stick to your own resources or plan to adjust dynamically, knowing your capabilities from the start of every new relationship will help keep your cybersecurity practices achievable and your reputation secure.
Learn and Implement Secure Agency Practices
When you’re carrying out projects as an agency, there are several potential vulnerabilities you’ll need to guard against to keep client assets secure and improve your reputation as a trustworthy service provider.
It’s essential to learn and implement secure ways of working that apply specifically to an agency context, including:
- Regularly updating CMSs, CRMs, and any other tools you use to ensure clients are protected by up-to-date security patches that account for new threats.
- Implementing secure SOPs for any activity that could potentially give rise to cybersecurity threats, such as client data collection, file sharing, API integrations, and granting access permissions to any shared tools.
- Carrying our cybersecurity assessments and testing regularly to stay aware of potential vulnerabilities and how to mitigate them.
- Training content creators, account managers, and other team members on the potential security risks involved in their roles, and the best ways to avoid them. Understanding the difference between KYC and AML is also crucial, as it helps to distinguish between verifying client identities and broader measures to prevent money laundering, both of which are essential for maintaining a secure agency environment.
Remember these are just a few common examples of agency security practices, and your exact approach will depend on your agency’s specialisms, the size of the clients you serve, and other variables.
Researching the security requirements for your unique situation, and implementing these as specific best practices, will help you manage and avoid some of the most glaring cybersecurity threats facing your agency.
Emphasize Secure Data Handling
According to cybersecurity education company ThriveDX, an incredible 95% of data breaches come as a result of human error.
Though progress with automated cyber security is steadily reducing the impact of human error, it’s still crucial to keep your staff informed about their role in protecting sensitive data and guarding against the threats faced by your agency.
Make sure your staff are working according to secure data handling policies, covering areas such as:
- User access controls that ensure team members only have access to data that’s absolutely essential for them to perform their job.
- Using quality data encryption, password managers, and two-factor authentication to prevent bad actors accessing sensitive data.
- Implementing robust SOPs for disposing of client data and logins once you close a contract, ensuring that any potential vulnerabilities are completely eliminated after your relationships with clients come to an end.
While implementing data handling policies will help you set a solid foundation for employee best practices, these will only be effective while they’re fresh in people’s minds.
As you’re setting out your policies, be sure to think about a plan for enforcing them, periodically re-training, and monitoring your staff’s awareness of cybersecurity best practices for stronger all-around protection.
Security-Oriented Reputation Management for Agencies
As an agency, your reputation is everything. Making sure you’re protecting client assets and internal data through robust cybersecurity practices will give your contacts better peace of mind and help you steer clear of security breaches that can severely undermine your brand equity.
We hope you find these pointers useful as you work to develop your policies, keep your client accounts secure, and develop your agency’s reputation in the future.
