Why Digital Trust Has Become More Critical Than Cybersecurity & Privacy

WHY DIGITAL TRUST MATTERS

By Lalit Ahluwahli, CEO & Founder, DigitalXForce & iTrustXForce

We all know that cybersecurity and privacy are becoming more and more critical with digital transformation.

The sophisticated threats with nation hacktivism and cyberwarfare have increased the overall risk and need for proactive cyber defense. Complement that with the expanded attack surface with the adoption of Cloud, Hybrid ecosystem, OT and IoT turning everything “smart”—smart cities, smart campus, remote healthcare, etc. The emerging technologies such as AI, ChatGPT, blockchain, etc., are being leveraged by the bad actors in a way that increases the intensity of the attack.

But what do we need to be worried about? Assume you are in a self-driving car in the middle of a running highway, and you get a call from the hacker that your car has been compromised. What is the first question that comes to your mind at that time. To check the audit and compliance of the car, or why did you trust the car? The same applies to Smart city, Smart Home, Remote Healthcare, Space Tourism and many other things today.

Hence the need for “Digital Trust,” creating confidence among the end users (citizens, customers, non-users and anything that is part of the digital ecosystem) to trust the digital services.

Need of the hour – Digital Trust vs “Standard” Cybersecurity & Privacy measures

The need of the hour is Digital Trust versus standard Security and Privacy measures. Digital trust is the foundation for any digital business. And in order to build the digital trust, we need to have Integrated Risk Management that can be analyzed and measured Real Time, is Factual (data driven), and validated on continuous basis. And given today’s time and age with sophisticated threat landscape, its needs to be automated versus human dependent.

How is digital trust different from standard cybersecurity and privacy? While cybersecurity and privacy is more focused on the confidentiality, integrity and availability of the service, Digital trust involves building confidence in the consumption of digital assets and emerging technologies.

How can you build Digital Trust?

Digital Trust is built by providing Data Driven, Real Time, and Continuous Integrated Risk Management with proactive defense.

• Data Driven – use of data driven and analytical methods to make more fact-based decisions about cyber security.
• Real Time – fetch the data in real time directly from the source (as soon as it’s collected and registered).
• Continuous – collect, analyze and monitor on a continuous basis.
• Integrated Risk Management – an integrated view of how well an organization manages its unique set of security risks.
• Proactive Defense – Apply security risk mitigation on a proactive basis through predictive analysis.

Are we doing enough to build Digital Trust?

Given the ever-changing digital landscape, we have a lot of work ahead of us. First and foremost, we need to understand, promote, and prioritize the need for digital trust and create more awareness. We need a total mindset shift from standard cybersecurity measures to new ways of enabling digital trust. Most of the organizations are relying on point-based solutions to fix specific issues which generally results in siloed function versus integrated view. The lack of integration in the overall cyber defense eco system leaves behind multiple blind spots that can be easily exploited by the bad actors.

How can organizations foster Digital Trust?

Building Digital Trust is critical for the success of any digital organization or digital transformation initiative. Following steps can be taken to enable digital trust:

• Know your Digital Assets – Develop Asset Inventory & Attack Surface
• Apply Defense in Depth mechanisms for multi-layer protection.
• Secure by design leveraging modern day architecture such as Zero Trust at all layers.
• Automate the End-to-End Security measures in all aspects: “Identify”, “Protect”, “Detect”, “Respond” and “Recover”.
• Real in integrated mechanisms versus point based solutions.
• Train and enable the workforce to be aware of the latest and the greatest threats and technologies.
• Finally – Do more than just “Check the Box”. Standard Audit and compliance will not be sufficient to enable Digital Trust. In fact, it creates a false perception of security.

Consumer adoption of any digital service from an organization hinge on what organizations does to build confidence through responsible usage of emerging technology such as ChatGPT, and its cybersecurity and data privacy practices; and establishing digital trust is critical to any digital business growth. The organizations that are best positioned to build digital trust are also more likely than others to see annual growth rates.

Article link: https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbestechcouncil/2023/06/27/why-digital-trust-has-become-the-most-critical-technology-concern/

About the Author

Lalit Ahluwalia is the CEO and Founder of DigitalXForce and iTRUSTXForce. He is the Commander-in-chief of the XForce Galaxy and is committed to redefine the future of cybersecurity by adding the new tenant “T – Trust “. Under his leadership, DigitalXForce and iTRUSTXForce leverages automation, AI/ML and innovative methods to bring tailored next gen cybersecurity solutions for its clients. Lalit is a Cybersecurity Servant Leader with professional track record of helping his clients be resilient in the face of constantly evolving cyber threat landscape.

He is fully committed to redefine the future of Cybersecurity and help organizations of all sizes become Cyber Resilient Inside Out. In his own words, “Cybersecurity doesn’t have to be Complex or Costly Affair”. It’s rooted in his beliefs that “business isn’t about what you can get out of it, it’s about what you can give through it which would make an Impact in Community and People’s lives”.

Lalit can be reached online at EMAIL [email protected], TWITTER https://twitter.com/LalitKAhluwalia,  LINKEDIN https://www.linkedin.com/in/lalit-ahluwalia/, and at our company website http://www.digitalxforce.com/ & http://www.itrustxforce.com/