It’s hard to overstate how important trust is becoming. In the digital world, trust comes in two forms: trust you earn from your customers, employees, suppliers and partners. And trust in the resilience of your own systems and processes.
The first type of trust is the most intangible of all your intangible assets. Recent events have proved how easy it is for even the world’s largest and most well-respected brand names to lose public trust. And once it’s gone, it’s very hard to get it back.
Trust is the net result of how you and your employees behave, which is why openness, transparency and an ethical approach to business are more vital now than ever before. In a digital economy a good brand only gets you as far as first base. It’s trust that keeps you in the game.
The other type of trust is more conventional: protecting your people, data and systems is standard operating procedure, but in a digital world you can no longer build a wall (real or virtual) around the assets you need to secure. Businesses are more interconnected than ever before and that’s one of the reasons why digital is opening up so many new opportunities.
But interconnectedness brings risks too, making your organisation more permeable, and more exposed. It could be hackers hijacking your Twitter account, thieves stealing customers’ credit card details, or the additional vulnerabilities inherent in moving to cloud-based data storage. The new economy brings with it a myriad of new digital threats, which means you need reliable and resilient systems that you, and your suppliers can depend on and your customers will trust.
It’s impossible to protect everything with 100% security, but some assets are crucial to your competitive advantage and the long-term success of your business. So you need to focus your resources there. Please click here to learn more about protecting your assets and identifying and addressing complex issues. From the obvious like cyber security, to the wider implications for governance, sourcing, and regulatory compliance.
