According to Cisco Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ:CSCO) data privacy benchmark study, organizations that invested in data privacy practices are currently reaping significant business benefits. The study links good privacy practice with business benefits, and it shows respondents reporting shorter sales delays and less as well as fewer costly data breaches.
A Spike in Privacy Interest
It’s merely six months ago when the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) became enforceable, and since then organizations have worked to get ready for it. According to Cisco’s study, 59% of the organizations have all or almost met the requirements, 29% are to meet the requirements within a year, and 9% probably will take a little longer.
The results of the study were that those organizations with data privacy investment in meeting GDPR requirements had shorter delays as a result of privacy concern when selling to customers -3.4 weeks against 5.4 weeks for those organizations who are least GDPR ready.
Besides, the GDPR-ready organizations showed lower data breach incidence, fewer records in security incidents as well as shorter system downtimes. Furthermore, they were much less likely of experiencing any significant financial loss as a result of a breach.
There’s Still Room to Innovate
Apart from the benefits that are related to security and privacy, the respondents as well cited some other broader positives which include greater innovation as a result of appropriate data controls, getting a competitive advantage as well as an efficiency boost from data organization.
More customers are now focused on privacy with the study showing 87% of the companies experiencing sales cycle delays as a result of prospects’ or customers’ concerns on privacy which is an increase from last year’s 66%.
The market is shifting, and data is the new currency, and for that reason organizations have realized the real business benefits of investing in protecting data. That has been the scenario in the past year as data protection as well as privacy has increased dramatically.
According to Peter Lefkowitz, chief digital risk officer at Citrix Systems, the research merely is the evidence of what privacy professionals already long understood that organizations benefit from privacy investments.