According to tax advisory firm Grant Thornton, nearly half of more than 250 CFOs surveyed in 2021 cited cybersecurity risks and 30% said a remote workforce was their biggest challenge.
Businesses have been using SECaaS for years, so they’re nothing new. In all that time they have been touting their ability to thwart attacks. But what SECaaS providers are not doing—and they need to—is communicate how they will help their clients handle the coming crises.
TAMPA BAY, Fla. (PRWEB) February 14, 2022
Since the advent of the global pandemic, cyberattacks have been on the rise. Bad actors have been seeking to take advantage of the chaos as businesses transitioned from office settings to remote workforces. The situation is becoming dire. According to tax advisory firm Grant Thornton, nearly half of more than 250 CFOs surveyed in February 2021 cited cybersecurity risks and 30% said a remote workforce was their biggest challenge.(1) The increased demand for such services has allowed for rapid expansion in the already crowded Security as a Service (SECaaS) market. In 2020, the security-as-a-service (SaaS) market was valued at USD 9,162.9 million and is expected to reach USD 22,669.17 million by 2026.(2) Add that to the 15,000 SaaS companies currently in the U.S, all competing for billions of customers worldwide.(3) The messaging of guarantees and full-proof protection before the pandemic has been the same across the industry and is being reduced to noise. JOTO PR Disruptors(TM) CEO Karla Jo Helms explains, “The winners in this industry will be those who control the narrative, convincing minds that they are the innovator with the answers, including when a breach happens. The key here is in how they execute their messaging.”
As Helms explains, “Businesses have been using SECaaS for years, so they’re nothing new. In all that time they have been touting their ability to thwart attacks. But what SECaaS providers are not doing—and they need to—is communicate how they will help their clients handle the coming crises,” explains Helms. Companies already have insurance policies when cyber events occur, but the rates are doubling, and the coverage is being cut in half. And to compound the problem, companies fail all too often in communicating properly to the press and their clients. “That’s the SECaaS’s key to disruption—having a crisis communication plan and specific ways to assist with inevitable breaches. There is a huge difference between planning for if, and planning for when.”
A SECaaS must not just be about touting their capability to protect their clients but more importantly, how also they mitigate and minimize damage, especially to reputation. Helms continues, “If an SECaaS is going to make the biggest deals, they need to be creative with their messaging, creating content that demonstrates how they will help businesses recover, thereby establishing themselves as the influencers. If they rely on just their numbers and processes, they are not going to get noticed—citing data alone won’t seal the deal.”
Young companies and startups that were operating remotely from the outset may have had a slight edge over companies who were forced to convert to a remote workforce, but they were no less vulnerable. Regardless, all businesses have ample reason to be concerned. Data breaches in the U.S continue to be more expensive than other countries—an average total of $9.05 million (more than double the global average). If that data breach happens to a healthcare or financial/banking institution, that cost can be significantly higher. The long-term costs to reputation, as clients’ confidence is shaken, can be devastating, even fatal to the business. The largest contributing factor to data breach costs was lost business—a whopping 38%.(5)
However, tech companies have flourished in this new reality, adding more logos (i.e., new customers) to portfolios. “There is unprecedented need, which means a plethora of opportunity, and that has sparked too much noise in the [tech] industry,” says Helms. “‘Guarantees’ and ‘100% protection’ are non-starters, and frankly, just not fitting in today’s environment. What would be more disruptive, would be SECaaS providers, partnering with Communications Firms, to already be ahead of these scenarios. That comes from communicating that their disaster plans are ready to execute—and that kind of messaging shows exactly how they will protect their clients which will build well-founded trust.”
Crisis management is the standardized process by which an organization deals with significant events that threaten to harm the organization, its reputation, its employees, stakeholders, or its bottom line. Companies and individuals who are not trained in dealing with publicized issues that endanger their image or viability often panic and mishandle matters that could otherwise be contained or even turned to their advantage.
“It is a delicate technique—a very precision technology,” said Helms. “When it comes to defending one’s reputation, natural tendencies in human behavior are many times the polar opposite to communications techniques useful in crisis.”
Tips for SECaaS firms embarking in influencer messaging to rise above the noise should consider what a crisis management plan must do:
1. Sequester off the C-Suite, Marketing and Sales from the crisis handling, except for mainline messaging to carry to customers and prospects—and use their time doubling up on PR, marketing, and sales efforts.
2. Include a strong focus on a volume of proactive third-party credibility to repair any damage to one’s public image and to assure stakeholders within your organization that recovery is underway and imminent.
3. Work hand-in-hand with your legal counsel as needed to ensure that sensitive media matters are addressed effectively and immediately with all parties involved staying on message. When you venture into crisis management, not only are you mitigating the damage, but you are also publicizing everything positive that the company has been doing. This communication includes one-on-one meetings with legislators, editorial boards, and any ally who will support your company in its time of crisis.
4. Have a multi-faceted approach that includes communication to all opinion leaders in one’s industry—in both the private and public sectors. Today, cyber incidents should be covered via a three-prong system: technical security > legal & compliance and > communications. If this last component is not taken into account or not executed quickly and thoroughly, it can be fatal.
About JOTO PR Disruptors(TM):
After doing marketing research on a cross-section majority of 5,000 CEOs of fast-growth trajectory companies and finding out exactly how they used PR, how they measure it, and how they wanted the PR industry to be different, PR veteran and innovator Karla Jo Helms created JoTo PR(TM) and established its entire business model on those research findings. Astute in recognizing industry changes since its launch in 2009, JoTo PR’s team utilizes newly established patterns to create timely Anti-PR(TM) campaigns comprising both traditional and the latest proven media methods. This unique skill enables them to continue to increase the market share and improve return on investment (ROI) for their clients, year after year—beating usual industry standards. Based in Tampa Bay, Florida, JoTo PR is an established international public relations agency. Today, all processes of JoTo PR are streamlined Anti-PR services that have become the hallmark of the JoTo PR name. For more information, visit JoTo PR online at http://www.jotopr.com.
1. Ryan, Vincent. “Cybersecurity Evolves to Handle Remote Workers.” 21 May 2021, CFO.com, cfo.com/corporate-finance/2021/05/cybersecurity-evolves-to-handle-remote-workers/.
2. Statista, “Leading software as a service (SaaS) countries worldwide in 2021, by number of companies.” Retrieved 02 February 2022, statista.com/statistics/1239046/top-saas-countries-list/.
3. Market Insight Reports. “Security-as-a-Service (SECaaS) Market 2022 Strategic Assessment- IBM Corporation, Proofpoint Inc, Dell Technologies, Websense Inc., McAfee (Intel), Cisco Systems Inc.” 01 February 2022, OpenPR, openpr.com/news/2542197/security-as-a-service-secaas-market-2022-strategic
4. Brook, Chris. “What is Security as a Service? A Definition of SECaaS, Benefits, Examples, and More.” 05 December 2018, DigitalGuardian.com, digitalguardian.com/blog/what-security-service-definition-secaas-benefits-examples-and-more.
5. Tunggal, Abi Tyus. “What Is the Cost of a Data Breach in 2021?: Upguard.” RSS, 22 Jan. 2022, upguard.com/blog/cost-of-data-breach.
