Nearly Half of Businesses Admit to Selling Customer Data despite Claiming Data Protection as Paramount; Consumer Behavior Shows Strong Correlation Between Loss of Business and Lack of Digital Trust
CA Technologies revealed the results of an extensive global survey of consumers, cybersecurity professionals and business executives about their views on digital trust. Conducted by analyst firm Frost & Sullivan, the inaugural report, titled “Global State of Digital Trust Survey and Index 2018,” highlights how consumers perceive and trust organizations to protect their digital data. It also includes significant data about how business leaders and cybersecurity professionals at organizations view their responsibilities of data stewardship, the licensing of consumer data to third parties and the technologies they are implementing to protect data and customer privacy.
This report comes at a critical time, as consumers are increasingly transacting online – whether for work, leisure or play – providing organizations with access to vast amounts of data, from consumer profiles and personal information to user behavior and habits. With that increasing store of data also comes greater responsibility to protect it against abuse from external and internal sources.
Amidst a continuous stream of headlines about major data breaches in enterprise and government agencies, the degree to which consumers have placed their trust in organizations to protect their personally identifiable information (PII) online has never been more relevant. In 2017 alone, the number of confirmed data breaches globally was staggering. Against this backdrop, it is crucial for business leaders to understand worldwide public sentiment concerning the sharing of information online, and the impact of data and privacy breaches on the company’s bottom line.
“We are at a crossroads in the information age as more companies are being pulled into the spotlight for failing to protect the data they hold, so with this research, we sought to understand how consumers feel about putting data in organizations’ hands and how those organizations view their duty of care to protect that data,” said Jarad Carleton, industry principal, Cybersecurity at Frost & Sullivan. “What the survey found is that there is certainly a price to pay – whether you’re a consumer or you run a business that handles consumer data – when it comes to maintaining data privacy. Respect for consumer privacy must become an ethical pillar for any business that collects user data.”
