TRUST - your competitive advantage in 2023!

The principle is simple: Compliance is the baseline that trust is built upon. Organizations cannot afford to run afoul of the law or lose sight of their compliance obligations and expect to be trusted by consumers, shareholders, and investors.

It is important for organizations to focus on the ethical use of data in automated systems by design, build greater transparency and accountability as novel technologies are developed, and help to create trust between the organization and the individual by implementing appropriate protections.

Trust should be at the center of an organization’s operations and culture

It is the new gold standard for business, as data shows trusted companies outperform the S&P 500 by 30 to 50%. It is critical that stakeholders from across the business understand how trust is managed and measured.

Building trust into the fabric of an organization is becoming vital to ensure that the functional goals and objectives of the trust focus are being met.

The coming 12 months will see a rise in organizations thinking of trust creation and the emergence of trust programs to effectively centralize required cross-functional collaboration. However, the growing concept of trust as a function isn’t simply found at the intersection of privacy, GRC, ethics, and ESG. Trust is its own specific function with its own specific programs, goals, and processes.

Organizations seeking to implement a trust program in 2023 should take initial steps to identify their processes, create a responsibility assignment for all teams and stakeholders, and look towards automation as much as possible.

Organizations with more mature trust programs should consider how they approach trust breaches. A breach of trust should be viewed by the trust office as separate to a privacy, security, or ethics breach, even if there are visible overlaps. Certain breaches of trust may not fall under the definition of a breach under any of the trust domains specifically but still have significant effects on consumer and employee trust, organizational reputation, and revenue.

Certifications will act as a framework for an effective trust program

Getting certified is more important than ever. Third-party validation helps with building trusted internal and external relationships and guiding trust programs.

Moving into 2023, privacy, GRC, ethics, and ESG, will all be impacted by the need or want of credible certifications. GRC teams will be buoyed by recent updates to the ISO 27001 certification that will give them scope to reexamine their security and risk management controls.

While ethics teams can look towards ISO 37001 to increase transparency in their anti-bribery policies. In Europe, the first data protection certification pursuant to Article 42 of the GDPR has been adopted by the European Commission. The long-awaited certification mechanism will give data controllers and processors across Europe an opportunity to achieve the same level of compliance for similar processing operations.

The importance of certifications on the supply chain has been a focus of risk management teams for some time, but their significance has been growing in recent years. In a 2021 study conducted by Cisco, it was found that 90% of organizations considered privacy certifications such as ISO 27701 or APEC Cross-Border Privacy Rules to be an important factor when choosing a vendor. What’s more, participants of that same study cited building trust as a benefit of investing in privacy more commonly than in any other area. Looking at the importance of the APEC cross-border privacy rules for the Philippines and its Business Management Operations, certification must be considered.

With more certifications on the market than ever before, there is a proven demand for certifying compliance with these standards. The primary motivation of which is to be able to demonstrate visible accountability for organizational issues such as risk management, ethical motivations, and environmental matters through third-party validation.

However, it is not just accountability on an external level that certifications help to elevate. Certifications help to build an internal culture of trust by demonstrating the values of the company through action. They show employees that you talk the talk and walk the walk. This can be vital to building operational compliance by ensuring that the connection between over-arching compliance programs and an employee’s day-to-day responsibilities is made.

In conclusion: now it is time to start driving ethical change, with the goal to operationalize compliance, enable trust, and drive value. Trust and privacy security will have to be embedded into the core of your business so that you can catch the tailwinds to achieve the 2023 success.

I hope that this focus on building trust and getting certified was helpful. Should you need assistance in implementing the suggestions, let me know; I will get you in touch with experts; contact me at [email protected]