Maintaining compliance and having strong security and privacy programs in place is good, but only goes so far if it does not add up to strong trust between organizations and their stakeholders.
In a video highlighting the necessity of building and sustaining digital trust, Mark Thomas, president of Escoute Consulting, noted that ISACA’s Digital Trust Ecosystem Framework (DTEF) can help organizations make the connection between the due diligence they have in place and how that translates to trusting relationships with customers and others with whom they interact.
“The Digital Trust Ecosystem Framework was created and developed in response to the need to consider interactions, transactions and relationships, and how trust is manifested in a digital environment in order to achieve business benefits,” Thomas said.
Thomas outlines several consequences organizations face from not considering their digital trust, including:
- Inability to meet business goals, objectives and strategy
- Degradation or failure of a digital product or service
- Inadequate availability of knowledge, skills, abilities and desired behaviors
- Damage to enterprise reputation or brand strength
- Failure to meet compliance requirements
- Insufficient cybersecurity controls and/or privacy vulnerabilities
- Core customer, user or consumer loss
- Third-party failures causing disruption in the digital supply chain
- Deficient technologies supporting the digital environment
Risk awareness is a key element in enterprises’ quest to build digital trust, Thomas said.
“Understand how the enterprise risk environment connects to the digital trust environment by identifying events that could affect the organization meeting its goals and objectives related to digital trust,” Thomas said.