Trust is the firm belief in the reliability, truth, or
ability of someone or something. Trust is the most important business and brand
asset you manage, especially in relationships with customers, clients,
employees, and stakeholders. An economy works because people trust each other and
the businesses they support.
Companies everywhere are pursuing digitalization
projects - putting emerging technology into action while aiming to solve
problems, create unique experiences, and accelerate business performance. By
doing this, value and trust must be created.
Digital value is the business value or economic value
generated through digitization. All economic systems and business interactions
result in costs for information exchange, coordination, safeguarding,
enforcing, etc. Digitalization lowers these costs and therefore gives a free
rein to value and is expected to bring greater tangible and intangible value.
In a traditional sense, digitalization refers to the use of computer and
internet technology for a more efficient and effective economic value creation
process. In a broader sense, it refers to the changes that new technology has
overall; on how we operate, interact, and configure, and how wealth is created
within this system. It has become clear by now that digitalization has an
obvious, lasting, and even revolutionary impact, not only on the economic
systems and commercial players but increasingly on the lives of individuals and
on society at large. However, it is important to understand the opportunities
and potential challenges surrounding value creation in digital environments.
Digital value constitutes worthiness desired based on
the use of digital information and communication technology, resulting in goods
and services that possess some inherent quality.
Digital trust then is the confidence
users have in the ability of people, technology, and processes to create a
secure digital world. Digital trust is given to companies who have shown their
users they can provide safety, privacy, security, reliability, and data ethics
with their online programs or devices.
For example, Amazon has created value over the years
and built trust. Since its beginnings in 1994 as an e-commerce pioneer selling
books and CDs online, Amazon has had to continually transform itself to grow.
It is the world’s largest online retailer of books, clothing, electronics,
music, and other goods, developing in new business areas, and, in 2020, earned
net sales revenue of over 380 billion U.S. dollars. Despite selling physical
books, Amazon also introduced the Kindle and eBooks. In addition, it is
threatening other businesses like Netflix and TV networks with its own content.
Also, it became a leader in cloud services and hugely profitable in this field.
Amazon Web Services (AWS) generates annual revenues and margins in excess. Due
to global interest in cloud services and the disruption they are causing across
various sectors, AWS has played an increasingly important role in the cloud
services industry and has become an important revenue earner for Amazon. With
its trusted and secure solutions, customers can rely on its services.
Digital trust has already become critical to how
you develop and maintain positive, long-term relationships with your customers
and other stakeholders. Building digital
trust requires businesses to shift their efforts in identity,
security, and compliance to a more inclusive customer engagement strategy. If
the lifeblood of the digital economy is data, its
heart is digital trust - the level of confidence in people, processes, and
technology to build a secure digital world. Companies that show the
connected world how to lead in safety, security, reliability, privacy, and data
ethics will be the titans of tomorrow (2018 Digital Trust Insights). When a
person decides to use a company's product, they are confirming their digital
trust in the business. The more digital trust a company receives, the more
likely it will be to gain more users. Trust underpins the success of every
business, traditional or new age.
Each transaction and interaction on a personal, societal,
and business level requires the establishment of trust. Businesses should
make it clear to users what they stand to gain from their services
and products, or technologies, by addressing what people are alarmed about, and
emphasizing what people are giving up. Businesses should also focus on removing
risk because it negatively affects a consumer's confidence level. As some
businesses have started including cybersecurity and privacy personnel
in their development process from the beginning, instead of ignoring
them, it helps ensure the company is not avoiding security measures just to get
their service or device on the market. Some businesses have also started
adopting the zero-trust model which decreases the number of
opportunities a hacker has to access secure content by limiting who has
privileged access to different machines or segments of the network.
As businesses strive to grow and create value through
digitalization, it is relevant to consider building sufficient digital trust
controls. There should be a deliberate effort to evaluate whether their
personnel have the right skills aligned to design, build, and sustain
digitalization initiatives, and if there is the need, acquire external
resources. Tie security and trust in business the right way, in order not to
misalign business objectives. For instance, companies can make progress by
focusing on embedding data security into new products and services; conducting
risk, regulatory, and compliance assessment; refreshing cybersecurity controls
and plans; implement data-governance programs that determine not only where
sensitive data lives but also the value to the business and how to protect it;
manage risks for the whole data lifecycle, including creation, storage, using,
sharing, archiving, and destruction. Also, monitoring of technology
infrastructure to enable high availability, disaster recovery, and data
integrity; focus on identifying new and emerging legislation, rules, and
implementation guidelines; as well as use an integrated compliance approach - businesses
operating across different jurisdictions should comply with the highest
standard.
Author: Richard Kafui Amanfu – (Director of Operations, Institute of ICT Professionals, Ghana)
For comments,
contact richard.amanfu@iipgh.org or Mobile: +233244357006
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