India, 15th September 2022 – ISACA released its survey report titled The State of Digital Trust 2022. The report highlights major gaps between what businesses are doing now and what they should be doing to build leadership and win customers’ trust in the future digital ecosystem, as businesses around the world compete for digital transformation.
ISACA is a global professional association and learning organization that leverages the expertise of its more than 165,000 members who work in digital trust fields such as information security, governance, assurance, risk, privacy and quality. It has a presence in 188 countries, including 225 chapters worldwide.
What is Digital Trust?
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.
ISACA surveyed more than 2,700 professionals worldwide who hold assurance, governance, risk, security or privacy roles to learn how enterprises are approaching digital trust. 194 respondents were from India.
Among respondents based in India, 53% are very confident and 24% are completely confident about the digital trustworthiness of their organization, and 82% said roles in IT strategy/governance help strengthen digital trust. However, only 24% have a complete understanding of digital trust. In the coming five years, 85% say digital trust will be more or much more important than it is today but 57% of organisations still do not provide training in 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.”
Organisations with low levels of digital trust suffer from many consequences, according to India respondents—with the top five being 1) loss of customers, 2) more cybersecurity incidents, 3) more privacy breaches, 4) reputation deduction, and 5) having less reliable data on which to make decisions. Survey findings show that analytics and metrics are highly valued, with, 82% indicating that it is very or extremely important to measure it, and 46% saying their organization measures the maturity of its digital trust practises; however, 31% are unsure if their organization currently measures its digital trust maturity.
Obstacles: According to 194 survey respondents in India, the most significant 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
Enterprises experience a range of key benefits when they prioritize 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 such as the Digital Trust Initiative from the World Economic Forum, only 10% and 40% of respondents in India are extremely or very familiar with the term “digital trust” respectively. The respondents also think digital trust is extremely important; 42% and 47% choose trust as extremely important and very important, respectively, for an organisation and 35% consider the senior leadership team to be responsible for digital trust.
According to the survey, 30% and 56% respondents also say that digital trust is extremely and very important in digital transformation, respectively. Respondents in India consider the main components of digital trust to be security, privacy, data integrity, and risk management, and 68% agree or strongly 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%).
Download report: The State of Digital Trust report is available as a free download at www.isaca.org/state-of-digital-trust.