Global cloud spending surged 21% in Q3 2024
In Q3 2024, global spending on cloud infrastructure services increased by 21% ...
24 Jan, 2023
News Summary
- Cisco’s 2023 Data Privacy Benchmark Study reveals that to build trust, organizations focus primarily on compliance, whereas consumers value transparency most. 92% of respondents say their organization needs to do more to reassure customers about how their data is used in AI.
- 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.
- The benchmark is an anonymous survey across 26 geographies* of more than 3100 security professionals familiar with 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).Even though 96 percent of organizations believe they have processes in place to meet the responsible and ethical standards that customers expect for AI-based solutions and services, 92 percent of respondents believe their organization needs to do more to reassure customers about their data.
Privacy’s return on investment
Despite a difficult economic environment, organizations continue to invest in privacy, with spending up from $1.2 million three years ago to $2.7 million this year. 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. On average, organizations are getting benefits estimated to be 1.8 times spending, and 94 percent of all respondents indicated they believe the benefits of privacy outweigh the costs overall. With privacy as a critical business priority, more organizations recognize that everyone across their organization plays a vital role in protecting data. This year, 95 percent of respondents said that “all of their employees” need to know how to protect data privacy.“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.”
Costs of data localization and greater trust in global providers
Privacy legislation plays an important role in enabling governments to hold organizations accountable for how they manage personal data, and 157 countries (up from 145 last year) now have privacy laws in place. Even though complying with these laws involves significant effort and cost, 79 percent of all corporate respondents said privacy laws have had a positive impact. 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. Remarkably, 90 percent also said that a global provider, operating at scale, can better protect the data compared to local providers.
Additional resources
- Cisco 2023 Data Privacy Benchmark Study
- Infographic
- Blog - Privacy impact continues to grow but more remains to be done
- Cisco 2022 Consumer Privacy Survey
