Organizations are getting 1.8 times return on their privacy investments
Despite a difficult economic environment, organizations continue to invest in privacy, with spending up significantly from US $1.2 million just three years ago to US $2.7 million this year, according to a new survey. However, 92 percent of respondents believe their organization needs to do more to reassure customers about their data. Cisco’s 2023 Data Privacy Benchmark Survey also finds that organizations' privacy priorities differ from those expressed by consumers.
Other key survey findings from the sixth annual survey include:
- Organizations are getting a strong 1.8 times return on their privacy investments, with estimated benefits up significantly in the past year.
- 90% of respondents believe global providers can better protect their data compared to local providers.
- 95% of respondents said that "all of their employees" need to know how to protect data privacy.
"When it comes to earning and building trust, compliance is not enough," said Harvey Jang, Cisco vice president and chief privacy officer. Transparency was the top priority for consumers (39 percent) to trust companies, whilst organizations surveyed felt compliance was the number one priority for building customer trust (30 percent).
Over 70 percent of organizations surveyed indicated they were getting "significant" or "very significant" benefits from privacy investments, such as building trust with customers, reducing sales delays, or mitigating losses from data breaches.
"An organization's approach to privacy impacts more than compliance," said Dev Stahlkopf, Cisco executive vice president and chief legal officer. "Investment in privacy drives business value across sales, security, operations, and most importantly, trust."
Although 88 percent of respondents believe their data would be safer if stored only within their country or region, research indicates this does not hold up once costs, security and other trade-offs are considered.
The benchmark is an anonymous survey across 26 geographies of more than 3100 security professionals familiar with data privacy.
