Enterprises around the world are in a highly competitive race to stay relevant and succeed in an increasingly digital-dominant global marketplace.
Digital transformation and innovation are needed to enhance value, but organizations must first actively maintain a culture of digital trust among all stakeholders. All parties involved in digital interactions must be assured that the data and information exchanged online will be safe and will result in the desired products and services being delivered as promised.
“Digital trust is a currency that must be backed by a robust validation process,” said Matt Chiodi, chief trust officer at Cerby and a member of ISACA’s Digital Trust Advisory Council. “Trust must be earned, which means that in everything an organization does, the end goal must be answering the question, ‘What can we do today to better earn the trust of our customers?’ Those organizations 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.”
ISACA’s State of Digital Trust 2022 report highlights five key aspects of digital trust that organizations need to address as a foundation for their digital transformation strategy:
1. Successful digital transformation requires that organizations maintain a strong bedrock of digital trust.
Business transactions increasingly require that sensitive and private information be shared online among multiple parties. In the growing digitally focused marketplace, it is critical that enterprises earn the trust of their stakeholders every day and with every transaction.
Digital trust is the confidence in the integrity of the relationship, interactions and transactions among providers and consumers within an associated digital ecosystem. Any breach of digital trust can have far-reaching negative consequences to an organization’s or an industry’s reputation, value and financial viability.
2. Digital trust has many facets that need to be integrated within a cohesive organization-wide strategy and approach.
Factors that influence digital trust include quality, availability, security and privacy, ethics and integrity, transparency and honesty, and resiliency. Enterprise areas most involved in digital trust include IT strategy/governance, information technology, risk management, assurance, compliance and resilience.
While all of these areas are critical individually, they must be managed comprehensively within the organization’s digital trust strategy. This creates an opportunity for professionals in these areas to step up, share their expertise and exhibit leadership within this cohesive overarching strategy.
3. Senior executives must clearly define, prioritize, measure and align digital trust throughout organizations.
While all employees have a role, an organization’s senior executive team has the primary responsibility to support and prioritize the digital trust that drives digital innovation and transformation. The report shows that there is a potentially harmful disconnect between the perceived importance of digital trust and its current priority within organizations. This will need to change for organizations to be viable, competitive and trusted leaders that earn the benefits of digital transformation.
Senior executive support also helps address the report’s most frequently mentioned obstacles to digital trust, which include lack of skills and training, lack of alignment with organizational goals, lack of budget and lack of technical resources. With leadership support, these areas can be effectively addressed and funded.
4. Measurement of digital trust is critical to improving the organization’s maturity and its ability to achieve the rewards of digital transformation.
There are many ways to measure digital trust, which in turn can help improve organizational maturity and lead to value creation. Some tactics include internal reviews, third-party assessments, surveys, focus groups and other customer/client research. Information gained can then be used for benchmarking against similar enterprises and other analysis.
Organizations can establish dashboards that cover their current state, the pulse of the marketplace, solutions to issues and new potentially unexplored opportunities. These activities can lead to benefits including enhanced reputations, fewer privacy breaches and cybersecurity incidents, more reliable data for improved decision-making, higher customer attraction and retention rates, stronger customer loyalty, faster innovation due to confidence in the organization’s technology and systems, and higher revenues
5. Digital trust is a journey.
Trust must be assured and earned every day with every transaction. As organizations transition from in-person transactions that may use an element of technology to those that rely near-fully on digital technologies, enterprises must show a commitment to strengthening all aspects of digital trust.
This is not a one-and-done goal. For enterprises to grow and succeed, they need to understand that digital growth must address ongoing technological advancements as well as the nuances of human needs, culture and attitudes. If organizations will be asking for more trust from their stakeholders, then they must understand how to earn that trust within the stakeholders’ comfort levels.
Editor’s note: For more digital trust resources from ISACA, visit www.isaca.org/digital-trust.