There's an increasing need to share data to uncover insights

To be aligned, companies need mutual visibility. When selling and marketing is involved, prospective and existing customer data comes into play. Comparing and combining this data helps paint a holistic picture of a company’s customer base, identify valuable patterns, and highlight opportunities for optimization and innovation. Together, these help create more personalized customer experiences that in turn drive long term loyalty. But exchanging such data is fraught with challenges.

To properly address business operational requirements and facilitate collaboration between an organization and its partner ecosystem constituents, technology solutions have become increasingly dynamic. There is now a vast amount of data shared between partners, much of it stemming from:

• Complex engagement models from many different players interacting across companies
• Continuously adding new partners through integrations, data sharing, and more
• Multiple layers of interaction with partner applications and services like CRMs and workflow tools
• Multi-national relationships and customers
• More integrations being established on a regular basis

It’s well-known that data is the most valuable commodity today, which makes it critical to judiciously monitor all data exchanges and protect privacy. Those that fail to secure information face serious consequences, typically:

• Compliance and regulatory exposure and fines                
• Loss of customer and market trust                        
• Lack of confidence in partners                        
• Loss of sales and revenue                        

(Source: IDC 2021 Cybersecurity Pulse Survey)

"There is a significant uptick in large-scale ransomware attacks, which are up 151% globally during the first half of 2021 compared to the same time last year."

Some of the most notorious include Colonial Pipeline’s $4.4 million ransom and meat packing company JBS’ $11 million ransom, causing disruptions that impacted both the brands and consumers. In 2020, corporate victims of ransomware attacks lost an average of 12 days of operational productivity.

With more data flowing between systems, many enterprises aren’t prepared to secure it‍

Information sharing is at an all-time high. David Reisel, SVP of IDC’s Global Datasphere states that by 2023,

"60% of enterprises across the industry will share information and data to cloud-based ecosystems to enhance internal operations and innovation and/or collective monetization."

This explosion of data and data sharing is coming from digital transformation, multi-cloud environments, and an abundance of new sources of data, streaming into organizations at breakneck speeds. These are just a few reasons why our world’s data is not as trustworthy as it should be.

Security-focused companies are typically well-prepared in this regard, but most other enterprises have focused on technical rather than operational issues, leaving them vulnerable to mishaps. In business ecosystems specifically, it’s critical to manage the following areas:

• Network security
• User authentication and authorization
• Role-based access control
• Application security
• Customer data sharing
• Data security
• Compliance

But it’s not enough to address each item individually. Enterprises need to establish comprehensive security policies, common governance and adoption of best practices, and ongoing staff training.

What we’re doing to protect data and enable collaboration in partner ecosystems

Here at Pronto we have a unique perspective given our Co-Founders’ extensive experience leading teams and building solutions at network security companies. Our platform was built with security in mind at every step of the way to guarantee confidentiality and data integrity. We’re proud of the certifications we’ve earned because they reflect how much we value the trust of our customers and their own customers.

In addition to systematically assessing all risks and auditing our systems, a few of our practices include:

• Regular network security testing
• Enabling user authentication with SSO, password-less login, and multi-factor authentication
• Adhering to Zero Trust Privilege, mandating a never trust, always verify, and enforce least privilege model
• Following industry-standard guidelines for application security, encryption, data storage, data retention, and 3rd party vulnerability testing
• Protecting customer data sharing by maintaining audit trails for applications, API, and systems
• Utilizing WAF, DDoS protection, secure data storage systems and TLS for internal and external connections
• Remaining compliant with CCPA, SOC 2, GDPR, and other state, national, and international security and data privacy protocols
• Natively integrating CRMs and workflow tools to avoid involving 3rd parties

Building relationships depend on trust, it’s as simple as that. And to establish deeper, more valuable relationships with partners, knowing that anything you share will be kept confidential is essential. That’s why we’ve built Pronto this way, giving users full control of exactly which data is fed into the platform and precisely who is able to see it internally and within partners’ instances.

If you’re interested in learning more about our commitment to security or how we could help you, contact us at sales@gopronto.io.