Choosing a link management software: 9 questions IT should ask

Links sit at the core of business operations, enabling connections between organizations, their customers, users, and employees. IT and security professionals must know how their company’s link management software impacts security for all parties involved.

Understanding how your organization uses links and how those links function for users and employees simplifies link management and gives your team visibility into how links impact your business.

In this article, we share nine essential questions your IT team should ask to evaluate the security requirements for your links. These questions will help you determine which link management software best fits your organization and provide ways to communicate requirements with all internal stakeholders.

1. Will my organization’s links work on all social media platforms?

If your organization uses generic short links (the default links provided by many popular tools) on social media, it risks the platform blocking or hiding its posts.

Unfortunately, there are individuals who use link shorteners to share spam and potentially dangerous content online, and generic link shorteners are the easiest way to accomplish their goal. Over the years, major social media platforms have routinely done a “sweep” of links across accounts and posts and removed vast numbers of generic links without warning, creating major challenges for marketers and other business stakeholders using these platforms.

Using recognizable but unique branded short links on social media increases the chances your links will be seen and boosts click-through rates by 40%. Rebrandly works with partners throughout the cybersecurity industry to ensure that our links are always secure and reliable.

2. How will my organization’s links impact SMS and email deliverability?

Deliverability is a vital part of every messaging campaign. If you don’t maintain your reputation with carriers and email providers, such as AT&T, Gmail, etc., you risk having your content filtered as spam or not delivered at all. Generic link shorteners will also cause problems here, as there is a higher association with spam and phishing scams.

Modern consumers and message recipients are also much savvier regarding online privacy and security. That makes them hesitant to click on generic links or any link when they don’t know the source. You can elevate trust by personalizing every message you send via text or email, helping your audience recognize exactly who sent the message.

Personalization and custom-branded domains also increase engagement with your content, leading to higher click-through rates and ROI.

3. Does your link management platform comply with necessary standards and regulations?

Online businesses are subject to regulatory and compliance standards based on several factors, including geographic location, industry, and audience. Your link management software should comply with all relevant laws and regulations to prevent potential legal issues for your company.

Rebrandly is compliant with the following:

• GDPR: Rebrandly makes every effort to ensure GDPR compliance. However, customers and users of Rebrandly are responsible for ensuring compliance with GDPR, UK GDPR, and other applicable legislation.

• HIPAA: The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act 1996 (HIPAA) established the security standards for personal health information in the United States. Rebrandly is HIPAA compliant and frequently executes Business Associate Agreements with our healthcare customers and downstream subcontractors to ensure compliance.
• SOC 2: Rebrandly implements rigorous SOC 2 Type II audits on an annual basis to test the controls we have in place for the security, availability, and confidentiality of customer data. These controls map to the Trust Service Principles (TSPs) established by the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA).

Check out the Rebrandly Trust Center for more information.

4. How precisely can permissions be configured across teams and roles?

The ability to define access to sensitive customer and business data is a core aspect of maintaining compliance and security throughout your organization. Unfettered access to information can increase the potential for issues related to data breaches or leaks, so it’s essential to know that your link management software allows for access control.

Rebrandly offers permissions controls via workspaces and roles.

Workspaces allow multiple users to connect to your different branded domains with varying access or control levels.

The user roles available are:

• Owner: An individual who can access and manage all data and domains.
• Administrator: An individual who manages all other teammates’ permissions, domains, reports, and workspace data.
• User: An individual who can access workspace domains, manage links, and view analytics for links created in shared workspaces.
• Guest: An individual who can view and manage links they create in a workspace or domain.
• Reviewer: An individual who can view content and add notes on links in shared workspaces, but can’t manage links.

These levels of access ensure that your team can effectively collaborate on links and campaigns without exposing your secure customer data. Determining roles in this way is an excellent way for larger companies and agencies to provide visibility into stakeholders throughout their organizations.

5. What multi-factor authentication options exist for your link management software?

Your security team needs to understand the authentication protocols and sophistication of every tool in your technology stack. Whenever you evaluate new software, review its multi-factor authentication (MFA) and password policies.

Rebrandly provides options for MFA and single sign-on (SSO) for all accounts. We use SAML 2.0 protocols for SSO to ensure your business’s sensitive data and assets are always secure. Our software also proactively blocks unauthorized access to mitigate the potential for breach.

6. What encryption standards does your link management software implement?

Encryption reduces the potential for abuse and ensures the safety and security of your data at any stage. Your data must be encrypted both while in transit and at rest.

All custom-branded domains created using Rebrandly automatically have a valid SSL certificate and support TLS encryption protocols.

We also work with a third party to perform regular SOC2 compliance audits and use Drata’s automation platform to monitor 100+ security controls continuously.

7. What level of visibility exists for link creation, modification, and access events?

Your team needs to understand precisely what happens in the event of a data breach or leak. Rebrandly’s compliance-first mindset means we track and log all events that occur on our platform. Consistent logging creates a comprehensive audit trail your team can use to assess potential vulnerabilities and track access throughout the software.

8. Where does your link management software store its data?

Many organizations must maintain a comprehensive audit trail for data management practices at each stage of the digital experience. That includes where data exists in any tool you use.

Rebrandly stores all of our data on US-based S3 buckets.

9. Does your link management software provide uptime guarantees?

If your link management service goes down, you won’t be able to create new links, and your existing links may not function properly for existing campaigns. Unexpected downtime will make it impossible for your team to perform their required tasks and damage your reputation with your audience.

Rebrandly has  99.99% uptime, with our core platform running on Amazon Web Services (AWS). Other platforms have recently experienced outages that directly impacted their users’ ability to do business. For more information and updates, check out our Status page.

Choose the most trusted link management software

Rebrandly is the most trusted and secure link management tool available. Contact our team if you have questions or want to learn how our service can help you scale your campaigns today.