Digital trust in India not as high as businesses think: CA Technologies
New Delhi : Business leaders in India are overestimating consumer trust in their organisations as well as their ability to handle and protect consumer data, a new report on digital trust from software major CA Technologies suggests.
Digital trust refers to the confidence that consumers place in an organisation to collect, store and use digital information.
There is a gap of 12 points between consumer digital trust and the perception of that by business decision makers and cybersecurity professionals, according to the report tilted "Global State of Digital Trust Survey and Index 2018".
"When it comes to digital trust, there is a wide gap between perception of business leaders and reality," Sunil Manglore, Managing Director, India, CA Technologies, told IANS.
Revealing the India-specific results of the report on Tuesday, New York-headquartered CA Technologies said that 86 per cent of the consumers have moderate to high digital trust towards the organisations they interact and transact with.
This translates to 67-points on the Digital Trust Index, much lower than what business leaders thought, the report said.
"We also saw a wide gap between an organisation's perception about its ability to handle and protect consumer data and reality. While 90 per cent believe that they have the excellent tools to protect consumer data, about half of them had instances of breach of consumer data," Manglore said, highlighting the glaring gap in perception of business leaders and reality.
This perception gap can lead to complacency among businesses and undermine an organisation's efforts to understand the importance of consumer trust, improve their security infrastructure and enforce data protection policies.
"Outside of the financial services sector and excluding some of the large businesses and pioneers in information technologies, the actual tools and technologies that are deployed by most organisations for detecting and blocking threats to consumers data are rudimentary," he said.
The report, based on a global online survey of 990 consumers, 336 security professionals and 324 business executives across 10 countries, including India, highlights the need for organiations to modernise their infrastructure to protect consumer data.
Consumers also need organisations to be concise and candid about how they protect data -- whether it would be sold or shared, and how or if consumers who pay for services could permanently opt out from data sharing, the report said.
The survey for the report was conducted on behalf of CA Technologies by analyst firm Frost & Sullivan in March and April of this year.
"The coming into force of a data protection regulation in India will go a long way in enhancing consumers trust in an organisation," Manglore said.
"We have seen that whereever there is data protection policy or law in place -- for example in Japan -- the confidence that the consumers have on the organisations they share their data with is extremely high," Manglore said.