MarTech360 Interview With Courtney Brady, VP Marketing, ThreatBlockr

“Your brand reputation is one of the most important things to a marketer – if people are seeing you in a negative light, sometimes you can’t come back from the damage.”

Hi, Courtney, could you tell us about your journey so far?

My specialty has been in early-stage cyber companies building their foundation and helping them accelerate to a rapid growth stage. I was fortunate to be employee number 2 at Distil Networks, where we defined and built the bot protection market. I successfully took them to an acquisition by Imperva in 2019 to bring bot protection under their security suite.

My background is in brand awareness and lead generation – with an ‘if you build it, they will come’ philosophy. I don’t care about the number of leads but rather who they are and the action they perform on my site. If they read something about my company, and I’ve done my job by having that piece resonate with a pain problem or area where they need help, they will continue the sales process for me. No forceful marketing here!

What challenges did the COVID-19 pandemic pose for you and your team?

How do you stand out when no one is meeting in person and only getting hundreds of emails and webinar after webinar invitation? I didn’t want to email people, especially since so many people’s priorities had shifted. So the big thing I tried to do during that time was to figure out what people needed. What were they missing?

One thing I thought of was since tradeshows and events were at a standstill, there were so many people missing certifications in their respective fields, and we tried to partner with leading firms (ISC2, SANS, etc.) to bring training back to them, so nothing expired, and they were still learning about relevant topics, threats, trends during that time.

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What sets ThreatBlockr apart from the competition?

Every firewall out there has been successfully breached, so they aren’t doing enough. ThreatBlockr fills the gaps and protects companies from all known threats- whether they are attacked today or tomorrow – they’re covered. In addition, we work with so many cyber intel and threat providers it makes us a hub of knowledge that seamlessly integrates with your systems and existing data. All deployed the way that works for your organization. 

How has the Digital Marketing landscape evolved and will evolve in the coming years?

The digital marketing landscape has continued to evolve with every technological advancement and the introduction of new platforms, including marketing automation, social sites, and artificial intelligence. In today’s digital marketing space, it is clear that marketers better understand the ROI these technologies can do for them. Therefore, companies need to include a plan to generate content in their digital strategy as the landscape continues to evolve and grow.

Why is cybersecurity so important in digital marketing?

Your brand reputation is one of the most important things to a marketer – if people see you in a negative light, sometimes you can’t come back from the damage. With so many options, building and confirming trust is critical for customer loyalty and retention (which ultimately lead to upsell and referrals to help grow your business).

There are so many marketing tools – many of which aren’t fully ‘vetted.’ People are quick to add tools to their websites for more visibility into what’s happening. However, they don’t realize it’s the single most valuable asset of your company that you are willingly opening up to attackers. Working with your security/ops team to know what tools are being used is crucial – especially for startups – they run so fast and make changes on a whim – and it’s easy to overlook security areas that can commonly get forgotten.

Why should marketers need to think more seriously about cybersecurity?

As marketers, online assets hold more value than ever, meaning that if bad actors tamper with anything we’ve published (even if it doesn’t contain sensitive data), it could cost us our reputations. Think about the horror stories of marketers’ social media accounts that were compromised and tampered with in the form of unsavory posts or videos appearing on company pages. It makes us cringe. Because in today’s digital age, online reputation is everything. 

The best ways for marketers to protect their department from cyber-attacks include:

1. Being selective when creating your marketing tech stack
2. Implementing security awareness training for your team
3. Researching and discussing cybersecurity 

What are the biggest cybersecurity threats right now and what are the security precautions against the same?

There’s no denying that cybercriminals are growing increasingly sophisticated. Yet, despite industry innovation and government guidance, what organizations do to protect themselves has largely remained the same. We’re seeing it more and more: Firewalls are becoming antiquated compared to the sophisticated technologies used by cybercriminals. It’s high time for organizations to acknowledge the firewall gaps and take steps to build more robust cybersecurity defenses. 

Enterprise defenders need a way to block modern threats that get through their security stack. ThreatBlockr uses more than 50 world-class cyber intelligence feeds to inspect, block and log every known threat from hitting your network. Enterprises use ThreatBlockr to gain instant network protection without expensive upgrades to expensive products or needing to add new, complex systems that just add to the noise. Our customers don’t need to change a thing in their existing stack – just plug the holes with ThreatBlockr and rest easy, knowing that every threat is blocked in real-time.

Could you name the apps/platforms that you use for Marketing?

Salesforce. I tell my team if it’s not in Salesforce, it didn’t happen, from tracking marketing campaigns, downloads, or actions and activities by the sales team, it’s important to have a source of truth of all records and what is going on. 

Could you name one other VP of Marketing that you would like to see featured here?

Edward is one of the strongest marketers I know, and his ability to creatively and successfully market cyber solutions to new audiences and educate them is something I’ve learned a lot from.

What is the one piece of advice you would give to those who aspire to make a career in MarTech or Technology space?

Be purposeful in your marketing actions and meet people where they are. Emails are noisy – so find trusted places/sources you can work with and meet your buyer in their trusted environment. It may cost a little more and not result in huge numbers – but your quality will go way up.

Understand that many people still have the mentality of what’s in it for me – know what you’re solving for and the pain points you’re fixing.

Thanks, Courtney!

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