How to Build Digital Trust in 2024? Everything You Need to Know in One Place

In today's digital world, trust is the bedrock of success. For businesses undergoing digital transformation, building and maintaining robust digital trust is paramount.

The landscape, however, is far from static. Cyberattacks are becoming more frequent and sophisticated, while remote workforces and potential insider threats add further complexity.

As ISACA's 2023 State of Digital Trust report highlights, many organizations struggle to define and implement digital trust, leading to vulnerabilities in security and ultimately, potentially hindering their digital transformation journey.

So the big question is how to actually build digital trust that will help you build an unshakable foundation of success. Worry not, because this guide will equip you with everything you need to know about building digital trust in 2024.

What is Digital Trust?

Digital trust is the trust that allows businesses and individuals to perform transactions (online services, platforms, and applications) with the confidence that the recorded footprints in the digital world are secure.

Organizations have relied on trust to build business for centuries. I mean who hasn’t experienced an agreement based on nothing more than a handshake, trusting that someone’s word was enough?

And today as more businesses and personal transactions happen digitally, those in-person handshakes have moved online.

Now consumers and customers depend on more than a company’s word or reputation. They expect a brand’s networks and systems will keep personal data safe and secure. This expectation is the foundation of digital trust.

But when that digital trust is shaken, the consequences are terrible. Because data breaches and ransomware attacks have a far-reaching impact, all stakeholders need to know that their digital relationships with a business are reliable.

As Greg Witte, Senior Security Engineer at Huntington Ingalls Industries, wrote in the book, Your Top, “The tolerance for any breach of digital trust is near zero.

This lack of tolerance for the failure of digital trust is why 76% of respondents said digital trust is important to digital transformation, according to the ISACA survey.

When digital trust is high, businesses can unlock a multitude of benefits ranging from a good reputation and stronger customer loyalty to practices that lead to fewer breaches and faster innovation due to confidence in the technology.

However, although companies do realize that digital trust has such a positive impact on their business practices and will make the digital transformation process smoother, they often do little to ensure the mechanisms promoting high levels of digital confidence are in place.

Less than one in five companies have actually thought about how to build digital trust and prioritized digital trust, and nearly one-third of companies have no processes in place to measure digital trust.

Why is Digital Trust More Important than Ever

With the consistent evolution of digital technology, businesses are now increasingly interacting with their customers regularly.

So it becomes important to ensure that these interactions are smooth and seamless to convert customer experience into customer delight.

Better user experience results in cumulative growth in the number of customers. This contributes to multiplying the consumer base and thus amplifying the overall growth of the business.

Here are some of the factors that determine the importance of digital trust in business.

Customer Faith

If the customer has faith in the digital system of the business, they are more likely to interact and make buying decisions. Better trust can be built with a secure online network and transparent transaction system.

Brand Building

Better digital trust can lead to enhancing the company’s reputation and improving the brand image. If the customer is confident in the digital efficacy of the business, they are more likely to buy or use the brand.

Competitive Advantage

An efficient digital presence can result in a better competitive advantage for the business and they are more likely to grow and perform better than the competitors who do not invest much in the security of their customer’s information.

Risk Management

With a better security system, business would result in lessening the risk of cyber attacks. This again would result in improving the trust of users and mitigate the possibility of any kind of digital risk.

Benefits of Digital Trust

Digital trust offers plenty of benefits to both individuals and businesses. For individuals, a digital trust allows for the safe and secure sharing of personal information online including banking information, medical records, and unique identifiers.

It also allows individuals to engage confidently in online activities, such as e-commerce, social networking, and online learning. On the other hand, for businesses, digital trust is vital for building customer loyalty, enhancing brand reputation, and driving revenue growth.

As mentioned earlier, it also helps companies mitigate the risks of cyber threats and data breaches, which can be detrimental to their operations and reputation.

Now that you have a clear understanding of why building digital trust is important, it’s time to see how you can actually build digital trust.

How to build Digital Trust

When it comes to how to build digital trust, there are many principles used to build digital trust, here are some of the main ones:

• Transparency
• Reliability
• User experience
• Security
• Integrity

Including these digital trust pillars as part of the digital transformation journey does more than provide a foundation for building corporate confidence with stakeholders. It can also go a long in enhancing overall cybersecurity maturity and helping the organization meet compliance regulations.

Transparency

Customers deserve to know details related to the collection, storage, and use of their data. Being transparent about the business’s practices around data collection and usage is essential to building consumer loyalty. As a business, that’s why you should offer transparency around customer data as much as possible.

Reliability

Is your company able to follow through on the promises it makes with its digital offerings? The customer should feel confident that they can visit the official organization's website or mobile app and know that the transactions are reliable because the organization has presented itself to be a good caretaker of PII.

Healthcare sites sharing medical data or e-commerce sites that rely on credit card transactions must stay current with standards and privacy compliance.

User experience

User experience builds on reliability. As a customer, we all have an expectation when we come to your company via a device. Even with in-person visits, we want a flawless process, whether it is a checkout without glitches or a database that offers real-time data about items on store shelves. Downtime is a barrier to good user experience, which means companies need to have good backup and data loss protection procedures in place.

Security

Today, consumers are savvier than ever about the risks to their personal information. We all have been directly or indirectly victimized by a data breach or ransomware attack. Building digital trust for better security not only requires a solid cybersecurity program inside the company but also requires third-party vendors and contractors to have robust security as well.

Integrity

Most consumers understand the fact that cyber incidents will happen even to the most security mature companies. And how the company's response to these cyber incidents will determine customer trust. Having policies in place and reliable messaging will demonstrate the organization’s integrity around digital trustworthiness.

Why is it tough to build Digital Trust?

As mentioned discussed above, organizations understand the importance of digital trust to overall business practices and ROI. But, when it comes to how to build digital trust, they are still slow to implement procedures around trust, especially as they add new digital assets.

According to the ISACA report, the top challenges to attaining digital trust include:

• Lack of skills and training
• Lack of technical resources
• Insufficient leadership buy-in on the importance of digital trust
• Poor alignment between digital trust and business goals
• Budget shortfalls.

The good news is that by implementing the best security practices all of these barriers can be overcome. Worth mentioning digital trust and cybersecurity aren’t separate, and they shouldn’t be siloed.

Just as each new digital asset within the digital transformation will require its cybersecurity protocols, digital trust should be naturally included.

Future of Digital Trust

As we move into the future, digital trust undeniably will become even more critical. With the rise of the Internet of Things (IoT), there will be even more smart devices collecting and sharing data, requiring even greater trust.

Moreover, with the increasing use of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning, it will be important to ensure that these technologies are being used in a way that is ethical and transparent.

Conclusion

Digital trust is essential for business success. It's the baseline of a safe and secure online experience and allows people to do business online confidently.

To build digital trust, organizations must focus on security, reliability, privacy, and transparency and proactively protect against cyber threats. As we move into the future, how to build digital trust will become even more critical, and companies prioritizing it will be best positioned for success.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q. What are the 4 pillars of digital trust?

Ans. The four pillars of digital trust include transparency and accessibility; ethics and responsibility; privacy and control; and security and reliability.

Q. How do you build trust in a digital world?

Ans. Building trust in the digital world requires a multifaceted approach that includes transparency, security, accountability, and human connection. One of the most important and effective strategies to build trust in new technologies is transparency. By providing clear and comprehensive information about how the technology works, its benefits, and potential risks, businesses can help users understand what they are dealing with.

Q. How important is digital trust?

Ans. Digital trust holds immense importance in today's world, where interactions and transactions are increasingly reliant on the digital landscape. It works as the cornerstone of success for individuals, businesses, and society as a whole.