OneTrust Report Reveals 70% of Organizations Consider Trust a Strategic Business Objective

Organizations cite board, employees, and budget as common challenges to measuring trust

OneTrust, the market-defining leader for trust intelligence, today released the results of its first trust intelligence report, “The State of Trust: OneTrust’s Benchmark Survey on Leadership Perspectives.” The report, which is the largest and most comprehensive global survey of its kind, provides a multi-faceted view into attitudes and adoption of organizational trust programs. Surveying more than 2500 senior business leaders across the United States and EMEA, OneTrust finds widespread agreement on the strategic value of trust and identifies common challenges organizations are looking to address as they establish programs and processes around trust. Additionally, a majority of organizations recognize trust as mission-critical and plan to develop dedicated trust programs.

• Leaders are prioritizing trust: 91% of respondents say organizational trust is important to them and 70% say trust is a key business objective for their company.
• The impacts of trust are well understood: 69% of respondents say trust is a key enabler of growth and innovation, and 90% have a budget for specific trust-building initiatives.
• Yet, there are challenges to address: 77% of respondents say getting their board to see eye-to-eye with them on the issue of trust is challenging, and 69% agree there are several stakeholders involved in driving trust in their organization.
• For most, trust is on the horizon: 76% of organizations expect to have a formal process for managing and resolving trust issues anywhere from six months out to within two years.

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According to OneTrust’s research, CISOs in particular, held stronger views toward the importance of trust and the associated challenges. This comes amid relentless cyber threats and in the wake of new securities laws that could hold CISOs liable for data breaches as they face an increased likelihood of legal scrutiny.

• 74% of CISOs agree that it’s difficult to innovate and grow without trust, compared to 69% overall.
• 80% of CISOs feel it is challenging to manage all the expectations in their role to uphold trust, compared to 64% overall.

“Societal, digital, and economic shifts have recalibrated what good looks like in business,” said Kabir Barday, Founder and CEO of OneTrust. “Today, stakeholders want to know how a company is driving profits and innovation, but demonstrating compliance across privacy, security, ethics, and ESG is no longer enough. Companies must show stakeholders that they can be trusted by conducting their business with ethics and integrity. Trust has quickly evolved from a competitive advantage to a critical enabler of innovation, especially to accelerate the impact of transformative technologies like AI.”

“While companies widely agree on the advantages of building trust, formal trust programs are still in the nascent stages, if established at all beyond a concept or conversation,” commented Catherine A. Tomasi, Director, Chief Privacy Officer at Con Edison. “Trust isn’t one size fits all and requires an organizational transformation, more than just deploying new tools and technologies. Some of the most important and foundational steps – determining how to measure trust, getting buy-in, securing budget, or identifying owners across the organization – still remain the most challenging because they are unique to each business.”

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