The digital trust measurement gap

Understanding and measuring digital trust can directly link digital trust to top line revenue, market share, and other indicators, ISACA found. But not all organizations are keeping track of digital trust. Of those measuring it, 94% agreed digital trust it’s extremely or very important to their organization, yet only 23% said they measure digital trust maturity.

“While that gap is concerning, I’m hoping over the next few years we start to see some of those gaps narrow as organizations better understand what trust might look like and they can take better steps to measure and fund it,” said Kazi.

One of the causes is a lack of specific definitions and benchmarks for digital trust, within and outside organizations. The survey showed varying degrees of familiarity with the definition of digital trust, with only 33% extremely or very familiar with digital trust, but this jumped to 55% when they were presented with the definition. Adding to the confusion, “organizations can have their own perception of what trustworthiness looks like, but their customers experiences may be entirely different,” Kazi said.

The survey also found a lack of confidence in organizational digital trust, with only 52% of respondents confident in their organization’s digital trustworthiness.

Kazi suggests that without adopting a framework it’s challenging for organizations to demonstrate improvements through measurement, which in turn helps build confidence. “Digital trust can be this huge, complicated idea and there isn’t always a simple starting place, and without a framework, organizations can struggle to define and measure trust due to its subjective nature, leading to inconsistent perceptions and actions.”

Focus on compliance might impact use of digital trust frameworks

The report suggests adopting a framework to guide digital trust initiatives helps by saving time and effort, enabling benchmarking with other organizations in a cost-efficient way, and providing added credibility and third-party validation in support of budget and staff requests.