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"If the lifeblood of the digital economy is data, then its core is digital trust." This is a conclusion based on the first Digital Trust Insights survey released by PricewaterhouseCoopers in 2018. At a time when the world is experiencing global backlash against technology in 2021 and public support for digitization is declining, this is still sad.
In fact, Edelman's 2021 Trust Barometer shows the spread of this “technical shock”. The report states that between 2012 and 2021, global trust in the technology industry has dropped from 77% to 68%. The public is becoming more and more suspicious of technology, and issues such as misinformation, personal privacy, 5G networks and artificial intelligence bias have become the most worrying issues.
The loss of digital trust shows that many people are worried about the role that technology plays in their current lives. This is especially important as millions of people around the world turn to online learning, telemedicine, remote work, and e-commerce in response to the constraints imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic.
PwC's 2021 trust survey recognized this shift in digital conscience. Sean Joyce, the company's global head of networking, privacy, and forensics, admitted that the pandemic has caused such a huge change that "what we consider to be the'state of the future' is indeed quickly adopted."
From this perspective, distrust of technology may hinder the open global cooperation that makes innovation possible. To counter this threat, public and private partners must not only unite to protect systems and data, but also must protect and maintain the technological integrity of new innovations.
Stakeholders from all walks of life must work together to rebuild confidence in the people, processes, and technology needed to build a secure digital world. To this end, the World Economic Forum’s Digital Trust Initiative aims to build on the meaning of digital trust and the measurable steps that can be taken to increase the credibility of digital technology through safe and responsible technology use, and to establish among key stakeholders Global consensus.
Through this initiative, the forum will promote the adoption of safer and more trustworthy technologies to avoid the "distrust trap" of citizens, companies and governments. In November 2021, the forum held an annual cyber security conference, during which discussions on trust became the focus.
At the conference, we asked global leaders in the field of cybersecurity to share their ideas and expertise on the responsible use of technology and how cybersecurity can deepen trust in the digital space. These are the insights of four leaders working at the forefront of digital security and security.
Responsible. Those who make rules and laws are themselves bound by rules and laws.
What are you doing to build digital trust?
Cloudflare is fundamentally a trust business. We require our customers to have confidence and trust in our system to ensure that their data is safe and reliable and that the data flows at an amazing speed. For us, the foundation of trust begins with transparency. Whether internally or externally, what you do needs to be transparent. This means that when you make a mistake, you admit it, explain it, talk about it clearly, and promise not to make the same mistake again. It also includes accountability, which means that those who make rules and laws must abide by them.
Matthew Prince, Co-founder and CEO of Cloudflare, USA
Our cyber security strategy is built on three pillars, the first of which is trust.
As the chief trust officer in your organization, how do you put trust first?
Trust is the cornerstone of our company. It is written in the DNA of our culture, technology, and focus on customer success. My priority is to establish and maintain a culture of trust first, in which each of Salesforce's more than 50,000 employees is committed to putting safety at the center of everything they do. This means that regardless of the scope of the business-from IT and operations to sales and customer service-each of us is committed to protecting our customers. From the first day, we have trained every employee to operate with a high degree of security awareness: choosing strong passwords, enabling multi-factor authentication (MFA), patching company systems, and so on. In addition, we enable customers to assume their shared responsibility, namely security, provide them with a common set of controls, and provide them with training and industry best practices, such as forcing all customers to adopt MFA to access Salesforce applications and services . In return, we transparently communicate the status of Salesforce's security, performance, and availability—communicate our successes and failures in real time.
Jim Alkove, Chief Trust Officer, Salesforce, USA
Empowering people through technology makes it easy for them to do the right things in the process of work, but it is difficult for them to do the wrong things.
How do you cultivate and establish a safety culture in your organization?
We set the tone from top to bottom and provide employees with adequate training based on their work profiles. For example, when people receive the right training, they play a multiplier role in areas such as developing code, setting up new servers, or privileged access management systems. However, when you include administrative assistants, or when you contact the board of directors themselves to train them on the network system, the situation is different. We advocate joint training, including our customers, because cooperation is valuable.
You need to go one step further and empower people through technology, making it easier for them to do the right things in the process of work, but harder to do the wrong things. Then you need to make them the key "trust stakeholders" for their products and customers, so that they don't just follow the orders of the cybersecurity team, but follow the rules, because this is what their customers expect. Therefore, it is important for us to have a strong central leadership to promote these trainings in order to build digital trust and digital culture through collaboration.
Judith Wunschik, Global Chief Cyber Security Officer and Global Head of Cyber Security, Siemens Energy, Germany
When it comes to our own network security, we believe in the power of overinvestment.
How does the company integrate cyber security and trust into the people and processes of the organization?
From cyber security to product development, we believe in the power of over-investing in our own cyber security. For us, having a solid foundation of threat awareness and necessary security measures to respond is a key requirement. For example, at CyberArk, we have embedded security professionals at every stage of the product development cycle, who are also developers.
Ongoing advanced training enables these embedded security professionals to provide developers around them with information on emerging threats and the latest best practices. It becomes a combination of security expertise, which we usually call security guilds, which means that they belong to a special group. New employees immediately understand that we really care about safety and they can hone their skills in a safe and reliable environment, which creates a positive culture for all of our developers.
Udi Mokady, Chairman and CEO of CyberArk
What can companies today do to promote digital trust?
Building a trustworthy business means making trust your highest value. Nothing is more important than earning the trust of employees, customers, partners and communities every day. Looking to the future, customers will not do business with companies they don't trust. They want a more direct and trusting relationship. Although trust can be a larger umbrella than security — including ethics, privacy, availability, and transparency — security is still the cornerstone of trust. Without a security foundation, it is impossible to achieve any other pillar of trust. This is why companies must build security in everything they do now more than ever.
Jim Alkove, Chief Trust Officer, Salesforce, USA
Organizations need to treat digital trust from a cultural perspective, and this culture will permeate everyone in the organization. This means that every employee needs to understand and accept the organization's digital trust method. It should not only be ingrained in everything they do, but there should also be a certain degree of accountability. I suggest that companies consolidate the details of their digital trust policy in the articles of association or other official company guidance documents.
Udi Mokady, Chairman and CEO of CyberArk
The Cyber Security Center of the World Economic Forum is leading the world in responding to systemic cyber security challenges and increasing digital trust. We are an independent and impartial global platform dedicated to promoting international dialogue and cooperation between the public and private sectors in cyber security. We bridge the gap between cybersecurity experts and the highest-level decision makers to strengthen the importance of cybersecurity as a key strategic priority.
Our community has three key priorities:
Strengthen global cooperation-Strengthen global cooperation between public and private stakeholders to promote collective responses to cybercrime and address key security challenges posed by obstacles to cooperation.
Understand the future network and technology-identify the network security challenges and opportunities brought about by new technologies, and accelerate the development of forward-looking solutions.
Build cyber resilience-develop and scale scalable solutions to accelerate the adoption of best practices and increase cyber resilience.
Initiatives include establishing partnerships to address global cyber law enforcement gaps by improving the efficiency and effectiveness of public-private cooperation in cybercrime investigations; equip business decision makers and cyber security leaders with the necessary tools to manage cyber risks, protect business assets, and investment immunity. Affected by cyber attacks; and enhance cyber resilience in key industries such as power, aviation, and oil and gas. We also promote mission-aligned initiatives advocated by our partner organizations.
The forum is also a signatory of the Paris Call for Trust and Security in Cyberspace, which aims to ensure digital peace and security and encourages signatories to protect individuals and infrastructure, protect intellectual property rights, cooperate in defense and avoid harm.
For more information, please contact us.
I urge the CEO and investors to establish a link between digital trust and its company charter. Digital trust is a network security business model that needs to be formalized. For technology leaders, understand your scope and assets and monitor the people who manage them. The security status and maturity of the organization should always be tracked through key performance indicators. But in the final analysis, trust is a feeling, not a science. This is based on what you perceive. For online companies, privacy, sustainability, legal protection, and physical security are inseparable from trust, because everything is interrelated.
Judith Wunschik, Global Chief Cyber Security Officer and Global Head of Cyber Security, Siemens Energy, Germany
I think the single highest return policy you can implement is to create an blameless culture. Human beings are human beings. Humans make mistakes, and it is important to learn from these mistakes. If you can create a culture where people can share the mistakes they make, it is important that you can learn from them. Do your best to punish the really wrong people.
Build a culture that recognizes mistakes and is transparent about them. This will encourage accountability. When someone on your team makes a mistake, consider how to solve the problem and reduce the explosion radius technically and culturally. This is the real key to building trust internally. Unless you have internal trust, you cannot build trust externally. So, start with an blameless culture. Start with transparency, consistency and accountability. This is the basis for building trust.
Matthew Prince, Co-founder and CEO of Cloudflare, USA
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