The future of security in digital marketing: Trends & predictions

Digital marketing has always been complex. To do it correctly, you need to be everywhere at once, look at your efforts holistically, and be able to pivot on a dime. However, the landscape in 2024 and beyond is even more difficult to navigate as threats have become increasingly targeted.

Today, we will highlight some trends we've been seeing across our work as a digital marketing agency and present you with our predictions and strategies for avoiding harm.

Information leakage issues from AI use

When generative AI platforms like ChatGPT became available to the public, well-intentioned individuals began to unknowingly provide hackers access to sensitive company data. In short, a Chief Information Security Officer's (CISO) worst nightmare.

For example, per CPO Magazine, "A report from Group-IB revealed that over 200,000 compromised ChatGPT credentials were up for sale on Dark Web marketplaces in 2023. These credentials were compromised through malware such as LummaC2, Raccoon, and RedLine, indicating a significant rise in the abuse of AI tools for malicious purposes."

It's not all bad news, though. This and other major data leak events that began with generative AI use have clarified that companies must stay on top of security to avoid vulnerability. This can mean setting proprietary data-sharing rules, rethinking where you house your data, and more. More specifically, if your company wants to avoid the worst-case scenario, you should think about:

Limiting access & permissions

When giving permissions to team members, consider exactly what they need and provide no more than that. If they do need high-level clearance, ensure they understand the security etiquette for using each tool.

Strengthening data management

The classification and management of your data must be maintained by an informed security professional who can also be leveraged for team training.

Ongoing training

Your team needs to know how their actions can affect the company. Take the time to do initial training and keep refreshing it as developments occur. Hackers aren't sleeping on this, and neither should you.

Evaluating partnerships

Whether your partnership is with an AI product or not, it's important to review your privacy agreements, especially with third-party software, to ensure they don't allow bad actors to slip in.

Prediction: Companies that do not change their perspective on new threats and implement safeguards will experience major breaches, forcing them to defend their previously stellar reputations using public relations (PR) and costly reactive mitigation strategies.

More strategy

Zero Trust was first introduced in 2022, but the strategy remains relevant. It follows the following principles per Microsoft:

• Verify explicitly – Always authenticate and authorize based on all available data points.
• Use least privilege access – Limit user access with Just-In-Time and Just-Enough-Access (JIT/JEA), risk-based adaptive policies, and data protection.
• Assume breach – Minimize blast radius and segment access. Verify end-to-end encryption and use analytics to get visibility, drive threat detection, and improve defenses.

What do those principles look like in practice? At Imarc it means from the initial requirements document generated for a website build to the ongoing maintenance practices we provide, we as customer advocates must adopt a proactive, threat-aware approach.

Inside our walls, we've created security best practices, held trainings, and monitored industry developments. Externally, we take user access roles very seriously, place a premium on cutting-edge verification methods, and endeavor to explain all of our build choices to our clients in great detail.

Prediction: Digital agencies that do not operate as collaborative partners will have more difficulty creating web experiences that clients can trust. Companies must be diligent in choosing vendors, or they may suffer from unexpected consequences.

Personalized attacks

Hackers are ramping up their personalization efforts. Current phishing and extortion scams include more personal information, making them harder to distinguish as fraudulent.

Some of these personalized attacks use data mined by AI platforms. AI learns by scraping existing data from different online sources. While it is highly useful, it can also run the risk of collecting personal information that can allow it to be weaponized for personalized attacks on users. That's why people must be more vigilant than ever in considering whether something is authentic moving forward. 

Prediction: More and more attacks will include scarily informed information. It will be essential for individuals to verify outreach in multiple ways before clicking links or taking other actions asked for by potential attackers. Unfortunately, this will increase the difficulty level for other legitimate businesses to execute their goals and will mean higher client expectations regarding security.

Every company is vulnerable

Not to be alarmist, but large-scale companies announce hacks all the time now.

Take Deloitte for example. While they noted that there was no threat to sensitive data, the fact that hackers are routinely going after high-profile targets means it's more important than ever to utilize strategies like Zero Trust. Assume everyone is attacking you, and you will be able to, at minimum, limit your online risk.

Prediction: We will see a culling in cybersecurity vendors. Ones who fail to help their clients in these trying times will be cast aside, while others who provide what is needed will rise to the top. That being said, even cybersecurity businesses are vulnerable at times, so it's possible they will need to beef up and retrain their PR team to deal with fallout from inevitable situations.

So, what can we learn from these security trends?

1. Be ready for anything.
2. Get proactive.
3. Don't be content with outdated security protocols.

In short, never stop innovating when it comes to security. It's how you'll stay the safest.

Are you interested in building a secure website? Do you have a laundry list of requirements that would intimidate any digital agency? No sweat. Send it our way and we'll help you build the best possible site centered on your business goals and evolving security needs.