Make The Anthem Data Breach Part Of Your Marketing Plan
By The Business Solutions Network
The recent cyber-attack on healthcare insurance giant Anthem (up to 80 million names, SSNs, birthdays, email address, etc.) has made me realize that, if you’re a VAR or MSP and you’re not pitching security solutions, you’re missing a huge opportunity.
Whereas many technologies and services you sell might require you to do a lot of marketing, education, and cultivating of prospects, security continues to be front and center in the mainstream media; the same mainstream media that prefers to lean on fear tactics to capture eyeballs. In short, the volume of attacks and media attention is practically doing your marketing for you. The fear of a breach, or resulting lawsuit, is enough to get a conversation started. All you need to do is give your customers a little nudge.
Forward a copy of an Anthem-related article to your customers, stressing the importance of data security. Create a short and sweet email about how your services can protect such breaches from happening. Work with your security vendors to obtain powerful and professional marketing materials you can send to customers with your branding. Make security sales a priority internally by incentivizing sales reps and field techs for the upsell.
The Anthem breach also made me realize that, just because a company is gigantic doesn’t mean they have their IT in order. Anthem was fined back in 2013 for having weak security measures that led to the 2010 expose of more than 600,000 of its customers. Apparently, a $1.7 million fine wasn’t enough motivation to fix things properly. I don’t want to imply that Anthem leadership was flat out negligent concerning security. More likely, the company lacked the policies, leadership, and technology necessary to keep data secure, and no one knew of the shortcomings until now.
It’s these security shortcomings of both large and small companies that you, as a solutions provider, can help address. The need exists, no matter the vertical. All you need to do is make the decision to go after it.