Digital trust can make or break an organization. With increased data breaches, errors, ransomware, and hacks, digital trust can be the difference between retaining reputations and customer loyalty after a major incident and suffering serious, time-consuming, and expensive losses. Ahead of National Technology Day on 11 May, business leaders can see how their organization measures with ISACA’s Global State of Digital Trust 2023 report, which reveals insights from 537 digital trust professionals in India on digital trust benefits, obstacles, priorities, responsibilities, and budgets.
Benefits of Digital Trust
According to ISACA’s State of Digital Trust 2023 report, 85% of respondents said that digital trust is extremely or very important to digital transformation; however, they also report worrisome gaps in several strategic areas including leadership support and staff skills/training.
Organizations with high levels of digital trust can gain tangible benefits and positive business results. The top benefits reported in the 2023 survey are:
- Positive reputation (64%)
- Stronger customer loyalty (62%)
- More reliable data on which to make decisions (56%)
- Fewer privacy breaches (55%)
- Fewer cybersecurity incidents (54%)
- Ability to innovate faster because of the confidence in their technology and systems (51%)
- Higher revenue (36%)
Even with these stated benefits and with 90% agreeing that demonstrating a commitment to digital trust will ultimately make organizations more successful, only 24% have a dedicated digital trust staff role and only 36% say their board of directors has prioritized digital trust. Eighty-two% of respondents say measuring the maturity of digital trust practices is extremely or very important, yet 31% do not measure the maturity of digital trust at all.
Measurement is a significant differentiator and leadership is driving this, 34% say they do not currently but will likely have a Chief Trust Officer, or Director of Digital Trust, in the next five years. Seventy-two percent are completely or very confident in the digital trustworthiness of their organization, but this jumps to 89% among those that measure digital trust maturity.
Holistic Approach Can Help Reduce Obstacles and Reap Benefits
Security, risk, data integrity, privacy, governance, quality and assurance are listed among the many key components of digital trust. Over a third (34%) are planning to increase budgets for digital trust activities, indicating that digital trust can be implemented as an umbrella approach that encourages existing individual areas to work as a cohesive whole in the most cost-effective way.
