DigiCert reveals widening gap in digital trust management globally

DigiCert, a prominent international provider of digital trust, has released its 2024 State of Digital Trust Survey. The annual survey analyses how enterprises globally are managing digital trust. It has shed light on the expanding gulf between 'leaders' who are excelling in digital trust and 'laggards', who are encountering problems with it.

Differences between these two groups suggest potential best practices for digital trust. The leading third among digital 'trust leaders' gained higher revenue, improved digital innovation, and greater worker productivity. They were more competent at responding to outages and incidents and were generally better prepared for Post Quantum Cryptography. Furthermore, they utilised the benefits of IoT more successfully. On the other hand, the lower third or 'laggards' underperformed in these aspects and found it difficult to profit from digital innovation. Moreover, the 'leaders' were more likely to manage their certificates centrally, be more inclined to use email authentication and encryption (S/MIME) technology, and generally had more developed practices in digital trust management.

The survey was designed to gauge how each respondent was faring in a broad spectrum of digital trust metrics. After tallying the scores, respondents were segregated into leaders, laggards, and those in the middle. Upon comparing these groups, significant differences were observed: 'Leaders' displayed far fewer core enterprise system issues, e.g., lack of system outages or compliance or legal problems, and no IoT compliance issues, whereas half of the 'laggards' did so. Leaders also had significantly fewer issues arising from software trust mishaps. For instance, none of the leaders experienced compliance issues or software supply chain compromises, as opposed to 23% and 77% of laggards, respectively.

Jason Sabin, CTO of DigiCert, stated, "As the threat landscape continues to expand, so does the gap between organisations who are leading the way in digital trust and those who are falling behind. Those who fall within the 'leaders' group and those who are a 'laggard' are well aware of who they are. The danger, however, is those organisations who fall in the middle and are not taking action due to a false sense of security."

Jennifer Glenn, Research Director of the Security and Trust Group at IDC added, "For organisations to be champions of digital trust, they must understand and actively implement the structure, processes, and activities that make it possible. This includes keeping up with changes to industry standards, maintaining compliance with regulatory requirements in each geography, managing the life cycle of digital trust technologies, and extending trust into digital ecosystems. Companies that focus their efforts on digital trust — and make it a strategic imperative for the business — the benefits are notable, including reliable uptime, reduced risk of data compromise, and improved user trust."

The research was conducted by Dallas-based Eleven Research and involved surveying 300 IT, Information Security and DevOps senior and C-level managers from large enterprises throughout North America, Europe, and APAC.