Survey highlights importance of digital trust in biz outcomes, customer loyalty

DigiCert, a Lehi-based digital security company, has released the results of a survey concerning the importance of trust in today’s business community.

The 2022 State of Digital Trust Survey that finds that almost half of consumers (47 percent) have stopped doing business with a company after losing trust in that company’s digital security. If companies do not manage digital trust, 84 percent of their customers would consider switching, with 57 percent saying switching would be likely.

Digital trust allows organizations and individuals to participate in the connected world with the confidence that their digital footprint is secure. Amid the backdrop of an expanding attack surface, leading organizations require digital trust for a variety of use cases, including connected device and user identity and access, data integrity, software security, email protection and web and digital content integrity. Companies that are strategically investing in digital trust are positioning themselves now as stewards of a secure, connected world.

“Digital trust isn’t just a buzzword. It provides the freedom to fully participate in the digital world,” said Jason Sabin, chief technology officer at DigiCert. “It has become crucial to maintaining customer loyalty and the loss of it has a direct impact to the brand. If customers lose confidence in the digital trust competency of a vendor, they’ll eventually leave.”

One hundred percent of enterprises surveyed said digital trust is important. Top reasons include the growing importance of data, an expanding threat surface, an increase in bad actors and pressure from customers.  Nearly all (99 percent) enterprises believe it is possible that their customers would switch to a competitor if they lost trust in the enterprise’s digital security.

It’s also essential to take stock of how customers perceive the digital trust of an organization. Ninety-nine percent of enterprises said their customers have more confidence in the enterprise’s digital trust today than in the past. Nearly three quarters (73 percent) said it is significantly more. Organizations recognize the importance of digital trust to their success, and top digital trust initiatives include increasing customer loyalty, reducing the number of security incidents and meeting regulatory requirements.

But it isn’t easy. The top three challenges IT departments cited include managing digital certificates, meeting regulatory compliance and handling the massive scope of digital assets to protect.

Consumers don’t have the same perceptions as organizations. More than half (57 percent) of consumers surveyed have experienced cybersecurity attacks. Top attacks include account hacks, password exposure and bank or credit account theft. Less than half of the consumer respondents said their digital trust in the organizations they deal with is more than in the past, and 54 percent say there is room for improvement.

North America leads the world in rating digital trust as extremely important, followed by the Asia-Pacific area (APAC).  Ninety-one percent of APAC consumers are concerned about cyber threats, more than anywhere else in the world. For a region with stringent privacy laws, Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) consumers are surprisingly relaxed about digital trust and have the lowest level of concern for cyber threats. However, EMEA shows strong interest at the enterprise level. Latin America-based enterprises lag behind the other regions in viewing digital trust as extremely important.

The survey also included a series of questions to determine how well (or poorly) each respondent was doing across a wide range of digital trust metrics. After the scores were totaled, the respondents were split into three groups: leaders, laggards and those in the middle.