As companies are increasingly relying upon collecting consumers’ personal data – either because it’s essential to their operations or because they want to create unique customer experiences – the more they need to ensure they protect that data. Now, if you sell a product, you also have to sell trust.
How important is cybersecurity for consumer trust?
This is because customer trust is linked to long term success, as it affects loyalty and word of mouth sales. And as more ransomware attacks and data breaches hit the headlines, it’s become clear that cybersecurity now plays an important role in ensuring people continue to trust companies. This was highlighted by a recent study by ObjectFirst. They found that 81% of those surveyed are worried about their personal data being stolen by cybercriminals, and a whopping 92% expect vendors to have some sort of data protection strategy in place. And, if a company experiences a ransomware attack, 75% would switch to a competitor.
This perception is also backed up by CEOs, according to KPMG International’s 2021 CEO Outlook Survey. This report showed that 75% of CEOs believed a strong cyber strategy is critical to create trust among key stakeholders. It also showed that 79% saw cybersecurity as a way to gain a competitive advantage and that 81% felt building a cyber security culture that focuses on defense is just as important as putting in technology controls.
How to ensure cybersecurity that breeds trust
But how to achieve this? According to the same KPMG survey, there are 8 key ways to achieve this:
- Expand the security conversation
- Develop critical talent and skill sets
- Adapt security for the cloud
- Place identity at the heart of zero trust
- Exploit security automation
- Protect the privacy frontier
- Secure beyond the boundaries
- Recover rapidly during a cyber attack
Ultimately, it’s crucial that you as a business, above all, have ways to protect customer data, but to also have processes in place to communicate and support customers if the worst happens and to get back up and running again quickly.