Research shines light on digital trust gap

As enterprises worldwide compete in the race for digital transformation, a report from ISACA shows there are significant gaps between what enterprises are doing now and what they should do to establish leadership and earn customer trust in the future digital ecosystem.

While nearly all respondents in Australia and New Zealand (95 percent) say that digital trust is important and 60 percent said that digital trust is relevant to their jobs, only 12 percent of their organisations have a dedicated staff role for digital trust.

Looking to the future, 79 percent say digital trust will be even more important in five years than it is today, yet only 25 percent offer digital trust training to staff.

Just one breach of digital trust can cause devastating reputational, regulatory and financial repercussions. Yet only 71 percent say their organisation currently prioritises digital trust at a sufficient level.

Even in an era in which enterprises heavily prioritise metrics and data analytics, only 27 percent say their organisation measures the maturity of its digital trust practices.

Building digital trust

“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.”

ISACA defines digital trust as the confidence in the integrity of relationships, interactions and transactions among providers and consumers within an associated digital ecosystem. It is a driving factor in consumer decisions and enterprise resilience in a digital-dominated environment.

The top three roles for strengthening digital trust are IT strategy/governance (85 percent), security (80 percent) and risk and compliance (80 percent).

Those that measure digital trust have two areas in common—their board of directors has prioritised digital trust and they use a digital trust framework.

The most significant obstacles to digital trust are: lack of skills and training (53 percent), lack of alignment with enterprise goals (41 percent), lack of leadership buy-in (47 percent), lack of budget (43 percent) and lack of technological resources (32 percent).

“Digital trust is a currency that must be backed by a robust validation process,” said Matt Chiodi, chief trust officer for Cerby and a member of ISACA’s Digital Trust Advisory Council.

“Trust must be earned, which means that in everything an organisation does, the end goal must be answering the question, ‘What can we do today to better earn the trust of our customers?’

”Those organisations that continually ask this question and make executing on the answers a priority will win in the future – win in market share, profitability and engagement with employees and customers.”

Even with global efforts such as the Digital Trust Initiative from the World Economic Forum, only 32 percent of respondents were extremely or very familiar with the term “digital trust.”

This underscores the importance of a consistent drumbeat about digital trust and its growing importance on the enterprise landscape.