A matter of trust: should your customers trust you?

In recent years, there has been a seismic shift towards new consumption models such as the on-demand economy and omnichannel commerce. This shift towards digitally-enabled purchases by your customers is also opening the door for criminals as they seek to exploit vulnerabilities in these new digital environments.

According to research from PwC, more than half of your customers will move on to one of your competitors if they feel they can’t trust you with their data. That may not surprise many people as we know that trust is now a key driver of brand value in today’s digital economy. This is why poor data management and governance can cause almost irreparable damage to your brand that can take years of public relations efforts to fix.

In this environment, the opportunities available can’t be realised without a focused effort to build trust across all of your digital processes. As customers become accustomed to sharing greater portions of their details, successful enterprises will be those that can cultivate trusting relationships with these increasingly discerning customers.

As I’ve discussed previously, managing privacy compliance and risk is also becoming increasingly complex due to the introduction of new regulations, and an increasingly complex array of data breach threats. While data is becoming the key driver of your competitive advantage, it’s also inherently creating the greatest level of risk.

Between incredibly sophisticated cyber criminals, the always present risk of careless or malicious employees, and the growth of hacktivists and state-sponsored cyber espionage, your business data is now being targeted from every angle. Governments know and understand these threats, which is why they’re placing the impetus on businesses to implement good governance practices when it comes to their data security.

As we continue to collect exponentially more data from new digital solutions, we need to be simultaneously implementing a comprehensive governance and security program to ensure we can minimise our risks and build that trust. To get on top of your data governance and protect your sensitive customer data, at the minimum your organisation needs to:

• Complete an assessment of your current data environment – This includes where data is being collected and stored. Literally any digital system will be collecting data in some form, so every area needs to be assessed.
• Perform a discovery process and comprehensive inventory of all of your data repositories – What kind of data are you collecting and which datasets are most valuable to cybercriminals? Which datasets require the greatest level of protection for security and compliance reasons?
• Examine how data flows within your organisation – Who has access to sensitive datasets and what are they using this information for? Is your data being shared with any third parties or contractors?
• Map out your current security technology to find any gaps – A layered security approach that allows you to protect your most sensitive data assets is ideal. With lower value datasets, it will up to your business to calculate the risks vs investment decisions on how best to protect this data.

Ultimately, it’s no longer enough to plead ignorance to your customers that you were unaware that their data had been placed at risk. The highly publicised roll outs of GDPR and MNDB regulations mean that every business has had fair warning they will be held responsible for breach of sensitive customer information. Your customers know this too, and they simply expect you to keep their data safe at a minimum.

About the author:

As the General Manager of InfoCentric, my team and I provide specialised expertise, advisory and implementation services in digital and data analytics to help our clients convert data assets into business insights for competitive advantage with faster, smarter and more accurate business decisions. If you’d like to discuss how your organisation can leverage your data assets to drive operational efficiencies, attract new business, and minimise risk, please feel free to get in touch with me at [email protected].