At Perimeter 81, we are seeing an increasing number of marketing services firms join our customer ranks. A recent review of our database revealed that we have customers providing a wide range of marketing capabilities such as customer loyalty programs, account based marketing platforms, email marketing, marketing analytics, and corporate gifting programs, to name a few.
Just like an HR department might outsource their recruiting, benefits, or payroll functions, marketing teams today increasingly rely on external contractors to perform key activities. Finding the right marketing services partner can boost momentum and be a game changer for a growing business.
Demand for these services continues to climb as organizations either struggle to find the right talent for their teams or prefer to use outside experts for specific tasks. Given this competitive environment, marketing services players need to be able to respond to customer demands efficiently and effectively, while demonstrating their trustworthiness. So it’s no surprise that they are adopting a Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA) model to underpin their operations.
ZTNA has emerged as a core requirement to protect company networks and enable the services that drive organizations forward. This approach ensures that workers can securely connect to the applications and data they need to meet customer requirements, while protecting resources from unauthorized access.
Organizations depend on marketing services firms to fuel their growth and we’re proud that so many of those firms rely on Perimeter 81 to enable their own services. Some of the key challenges we address are summarized below.
Marketing services companies often host development environments in public or private clouds, and developers require reliable access from across the country or around the globe. An encrypted connection is fundamental, particularly with applications that handle sensitive data.
Latency is also a significant concern, as it impacts developer productivity and user experience. Using the open internet, traffic between the developer and the dev server will make an unknown number of hops from ISP to ISP until reaching its destination. Each handoff adds jitter, packet loss, and latency. Over time, traffic quality degrades and becomes increasingly unreliable and slow.
The Perimeter 81 platform addresses these concerns by empowering developers with secure, dependable, and high-speed connectivity to dev servers, wherever they are located.
The platform authenticates and authorizes users and devices connecting to cloud resources, ensuring that only authorized developers can interact with the dev environment. Zero trust network access enhances overall security by granting least privileged access to users after verification. This minimizes the risk of data theft or misuse by employees with malicious intent or those who accidentally compromise security.
Instead of competing with traffic on the open internet, packets are sent across a global backbone network with bandwidth reserved for each Perimeter 81 customer. This puts developer traffic on the high speed lane, ensuring smooth performance and uninterrupted productivity.
Additionally, many Perimeter 81 customers enhance their network security with tunneling and IP whitelisting. Tunnels establish an encrypted connection to the cloud provider using VPN protocols like IPSec and Wireguard, ensuring that no one can read or intercept the data without the encryption key. IP whitelisting creates a direct connection to the cloud provider, hiding the development environment from the open internet. The Perimeter 81 Support team is adept at setting up these connections and is always available to help.
Finally, connections are protected with bank-level encryption, allowing developers to securely access applications, data, and other resources from remote locations. User management is simple, facilitating the quick addition of new developers to the protected network and granting them system permissions with ease.
Customer data is the lifeblood of many marketing services companies. Since this data is often housed in public cloud platforms, these records must be guarded against both attacks by external actors and insider threats such as unauthorized access or accidental disclosure. Failing to adequately protect customer data can lead to not only compliance violations and legal action, but also reputational damage that could be unrecoverable for a small business.
Similarly, losing access to financial records, strategy documents, and other intellectual property can hamper day-to-day operations and directly impact revenue. Cybercriminals are keenly aware of this, which is why ransomware campaigns are so effective. In the interest of getting back to normal operations as quickly as possible, many organizations opt for the quick route and pay the ransom.
Based on ZTNA principles, the Perimeter 81 platform ensures that access to sensitive customer data is strictly controlled. By authenticating and verifying each user and device, the risk of a data breach or other attack is mitigated. Limiting access also minimizes the risk of data theft or misuse by employees with malicious intent or those who accidentally compromise security.
Perimeter 81’s secure web gateway provides an added layer of data protection against threats like ransomware. It does so by inspecting traffic for known malware and suspicious file properties, and preventing access to malicious websites.
The majority of marketing services companies are cloud-first or cloud-native. This allows them to attract and hire talent from anywhere in the world, whether for full-time roles or contracted projects.
The Perimeter 81 SaaS platform, with zero hardware to deploy or maintain, is ideal for teams with geographically-dispersed workers. Private network gateways limit latency and boost speeds for productive and agile remote work no matter where team members are located.
Our identity-centric platform provides seamless, secure access to business applications and data from any device or location using contextual access controls. And if a user’s device is compromised, access will be denied if the user’s identity is not authenticated.
Additionally, high scalability and flexibility match the dynamic nature of contracted projects. As teams ramp up and wind down, management of users and access levels is quick and easy using the intuitive Perimeter 81 management console.
As businesses look for new ways to generate demand and increase customer satisfaction, they are increasingly hiring marketing services providers. Those firms require innovative solutions to ensure efficiency, security, and trust in a competitive landscape.
By delivering secure access, data protection, and support for remote workers, the Perimeter 81 platform is an ideal fit for cloud-native, geographically distributed teams. Perimeter 81 enables marketing services firms to focus on their core business, ensuring secure and efficient operations while maintaining the trust of their clients.
