Cybersecurity and Trust

I am sometimes asked to describe the value cybersecurity brings. I respond that we help sustain the organization's trust relationship with its customers, shareholders, and regulators. 

Trust is a complex concept that involves confidence in the reliability, honesty, and credibility of a person, organization, or system. Trust is based on a combination of past experiences, reputation, communication, and emotional connections, and it can take a long time to build but can be easily broken.

Cybersecurity teams alone do not sustain trust with our stakeholders. Security is one of the components that must work together to create a trusting environment for a customer-organization partnership. An outstanding product that processes financial transactions and customer data super fast but is not secure will soon stop being excellent when the data the customers provide is stolen and used to commit fraud. Trust when people use computers is often associated with systems, networks, and data security and reliability. Customers must believe that the application they use to buy products with credit or debit cards will protect that information and any personal information they give. 

Trust in computing is established through various mechanisms, such as authentication, authorization, encryption, and digital signatures. These mechanisms help to verify the identity of users and systems, ensure that only authorized users can access resources or data, and protect against data tampering and unauthorized changes.

These are some ways trust is maintained by cybersecurity:

1. Protection of sensitive information: By implementing strong security principles such as confidentiality, integrity, and non-repudiation, we can demonstrate that we take the protection of sensitive information seriously. This helps build trust with customers, shareholders, and regulators.
2. Compliance with regulations: HIPPA (in the US), GDPR (in the EU), and PCI-DSS (everywhere credit cards exist) make many security principles real. By demonstrating compliance with these regulations, we show that we are serious about protecting sensitive data, which sustains the trust of our customers and stakeholders.
3. Responsiveness to security incidents: Continuous monitoring and accountability help us respond quickly and effectively. We build trust with customers, shareholders, and regulators by demonstrating a prompt and appropriate response to security incidents.
4. Reducing the risk of security incidents: By implementing security principles such as defense in depth, micro-segmentation, and least privilege access, organizations can reduce security incidents.

So, security plays a role in sustaining the trust relationship with our customers, regulators, and shareholders. Security implements and operates the controls that make security happen and help to limit the damage when things don't work as they should. Security validates controls to meet our compliance requirements and, through risk assessment, provides controls to meet threats. Security is or should be, part of any great online product offering to sustain the trust relationship.