‘Digital trust is the bedrock of business relationships & is critical for strategic digital transformation’

A survey finds serious gaps between what businesses are doing now and what they should be doing to build leadership and win customer trust in the future digital ecosystem, as global businesses vie for digital transformation.

India was ranked the second worst hit country in terms of data breaches from January to June 2022. SMBs in the APJ area with weak cybersecurity but the ability to pay ransom are a major target for RaaS groups like Conti. Groups like Worok are targeting companies from the telecommunications, banking, maritime, energy, military, government, and public sectors.

An entity that has suffered in all this is digital trust. The State of Digital Trust 2022 survey report from ISACA highlights serious gaps between what businesses are doing now and what they should be doing to build leadership and win customer trust in the future digital ecosystem, as global businesses vie for digital transformation.

ISACA defines digital trust as ‘the confidence in the integrity of relationships, interactions and transactions among providers and consumers within an associated digital ecosystem’. They call it a motivating reason in consumer decisions and enterprise resilience in a digital-dominated environment.

The survey found that among India based respondents, 53% are very confident and 24% are completely confident about the digital trustworthiness of their organization, and 82% said roles in IT strategy/governance aid in strengthening digital trust.

However, only 24% have a complete understanding of digital trust. In the coming five years, 85% say digital trust gain more importance than today but 57% of organisations still do not provide training in digital trust.

Innovation, market leadership and financial performance rely heavily on trust that must be earned every day

“Digital trust is the bedrock of business relationships, and is critical for strategic digital transformation,” said David Samuelson, chief executive officer, ISACA. “Innovation, market leadership and financial performance rely heavily on trust that must be earned every day.”

Consequences of Loss of Digital Trust

Organisations with low levels of digital trust face several consequences, according to India respondents—with the top five being loss of customers, more cybersecurity incidents, more privacy breaches, loss of reputation, and having less reliable data on which to make decisions.

Survey findings reveal that analytics and metrics are highly valued, with, 82% showing that it is immensely important to measure it, and 46% saying their organization measures the maturity of its digital trust practises. However, 31% are not sure if their organization currently measures its digital trust maturity.

Obstacles to Digital Trust

According to 194 survey respondents in India, the most important obstacles to digital trust are lack of staff skills and training (56%), lack of leadership buy-in (49%), lack of alignment of digital trust and enterprise goals (49%), lack of technological resources (47%) and insufficient processes and/or governance practices (41%).

Benefits of Digital Trust

Organisations can leverage an array of benefits by prioritiing digital trust in their strategic planning. According to respondents in India, high levels of digital trust are more likely to lead to:

Positive reputations – 70%
Stronger customer loyalty – 61%
More reliable data on which to make decisions – 58%
Fewer cybersecurity incidents – 55%
Fewer privacy breaches – 53%
Ability to innovate faster because of the confidence in their technology and systems – 51%
Higher revenue – 35%

Growth Opportunity

Despite global efforts like the Digital Trust Initiative from the World Economic Forum, the survey shows that only 10% and 40% of respondents in India are extremely or very familiar with the term ‘digital trust’ respectively. Such respondents also think digital trust is important; almost half of them choosing trust as extremely important for an organisation and 35% considering the senior leadership team to be responsible for digital trust.

Respondents in India consider the main components of digital trust to be security, privacy, data integrity, and risk management, and more than half agree that there is sufficient collaboration at their organization among professionals who work in these fields.

Excepting IT strategy, survey respondents indicate that the other top roles focused on strengthening digital trust are security (79%), information technology (73%) and risk and compliance (71%).

Navanwita Bora Sachdev

Navanwita is the editor of The Tech Panda who also frequently publishes stories in news outlets such as The Indian Express, Entrepreneur India, and The Business Standard