While all companies think digital trust is important, 57% have been victims of a security breach, and 87% of consumers would switch to a competitor if they lost trust in the enterprise. The findings come from a new survey by security firm DigiCert.

Unsurprisingly, financial firms were the most likely to say digital trust was extremely important (96% of employees and 95% of enterprises).

And 98% of businesses felt they were doing well in terms of customer trust, but in terms of preventing phishing or email attacks the figure was lower at 76%.

The report asked how we:

• make sure the people (and devices) we’re connecting with are legitimate;
• know that the data we consume is safe;
• ensure we’re not subject to security breaches or denial-of-service attacks;
• make sure the applications and services we run haven’t been compromised.

“Digital trust isn’t just a buzzword. It provides the freedom to fully participate in the digital world. If customers lose confidence in the digital trust competency of a vendor, they’ll eventually leave.”

Jason Sabin, CTO, DigiCert

The knock-on effect of legal, regulatory and remediation costs in the event of a breach is the loss of customer loyalty and impact on the company’s brand.

“Digital trust isn’t just a buzzword. It provides the freedom to fully participate in the digital world. If customers lose confidence in the digital trust competency of a vendor, they’ll eventually leave,” said Jason Sabin, CTO, DigiCert.

A Forbes Insights report found that nearly half (46%) of all organizations have experienced reputational and brand damage due to a third-party security breach.

North American consumers (47%), employees (90%), and enterprises (95%) were more likely than those in other regions to see digital trust as extremely important.