Efforts to achieve digital trust at the enterprise level will be stymied until better cross-functional collaboration becomes the norm.
That was one of the main takeaways from ISACA’s recent State of Digital Trust report, analyzed during a recent ISACA Live episode by Karen Heslop, ISACA’s vice president of content development, and Matt Chiodi, chief trust officer at Cerby and a member of ISACA’s Digital Trust Advisory Council.
Only 12 percent of global respondents to ISACA’s State of Digital Trust survey strongly agree that there is sufficient collaboration among practitioners in key digital trust fields such as security, privacy, risk, assurance, governance and quality. Heslop thinks that needs to change to create a more resilient and trustworthy digital ecosystem.
“Despite all of our collective best efforts and the best of intentions, many people still operate in a silo,” Heslop said. “Many people tend to focus on their immediate departmental efforts and initiatives, and we don’t often stop to think about how that work affects others or how it impacts the broader organization, and particularly how it’s going to impact trust concerns within that organization.”
Added Chiodi: “The research shows organizations are not really approaching (digital trust) holistically. There really seems to be a piecemeal approach, which isn’t as effective.”
The top answers survey respondents provided when asked about the biggest obstacles to achieving high levels of digital trust at their organizations were “lack of skills/training,” “lack of alignment of digital trust and enterprise goals” and “lack of leadership buy-in.”
Chiodi sees all of those obstacles as related—and able to be remedied.
“If digital trust initiatives are aligned with organizational goals, that would get leadership for buy-in purposes, and then that would unlock budget, which would lead to the training for the skills required,” Chiodi said.
Watch the full ISACA Live episode here.