Establishing digital trust with customers and stakeholders remains elusive for many organizations, as reinforced by new ISACA research.
Only 23 percent of respondents to ISACA’s State of Digital Trust 2024 report indicate that their organization measures digital trust maturity despite 81 percent saying that demonstrating a commitment to digital trust can lead to success.
The report also shows:
- 82 percent say digital trust will be even more important in five years
- 78 percent say that digital trust is important to digital transformation
- 71 percent say a positive reputation is the top digital trust-related benefit
- 53 percent say lack of skills and training is the top obstacle to achieving digital trust
Building and sustaining credibility as a trustworthy organization is more attainable with independent validation.
“Independent digital trust reviews are also an important element in ensuring that an organization knows its areas of strength and weakness,” according to the State of Digital Trust report. “In addition, when external reviews are made public and available to others, they provide a common understanding for customers, partners, and other stakeholders to gain reliable and believable insights related to their digital trust in the organization. Reviews can be the leverage that tips the decision to buy or renew contracts/subscriptions and continue purchasing from an organization.
“Independent reviews are common in other disciplines and digital trust assessments are expected to be in equal demand. They may be conducted traditionally in coordination with regulatory bodies in line with new laws and regulations, or they may be part of a more modern digital trust ecosystem. Most likely, digital trust assessments will be a fusion of both methods and will encompass variants, indicators, and scoring that will help people understand an organization’s trustworthiness.”
The report also addresses the key components to building digital trust cross-functionally and the impact of emerging technologies in the overall trust equation.
“With the explosive growth of AI, enterprises need to incorporate security, privacy and reliability under a digital trust umbrella,” said Meghan Maneval, vice president of product strategy and evangelism, RiskOptics.
In its conclusion, the report asserts that having strong digital trust practices in place will soon be the expectation from customers, so now is the time for organizations across the globe to lay the groundwork.
“Digital trust is instrumental in building relationships to mitigate adverse consequences when unavoidable incidents occur,” said Matt Chiodi, chief trust officer, Cerby.
Find out more and download the 2024 State of Digital Trust report here. Explore the new Digital Trust Ecosystem Framework Foundation Certificate here, and find more digital trust resources from ISACA at www.isaca.org/digital-trust.