When a waiter asks if you want fries or a milkshake with your meal, you might think, “Why can’t I have both?” The same goes for the customers of any organization with digital channels for services and products, especially when it comes to convenience and security. Cue the challenge for every security and digital transformation leader.

IBM Trusteer recently partnered with Information Security Media Group (ISMG), the world’s largest media organization devoted solely to information security and risk management, to conduct the “ISMG 2018 Digital Identity Trust Survey” — and the results may surprise you.

Roughly 150 security leaders participated in the survey, which aimed to answer the following questions:

• To what degree are organizations currently establishing digital identity trust with new customers?
• What methods and tools are organizations using to validate the digital identity authenticity?
• What investments are organizations making in emerging technologies, such as artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning and blockchain, to improve their ability to establish and maintain digital identity trust for new and existing customers?

Download the full ISMG Survey

Striking a Balance Between Customer Experience and Security

Consider this: 96 percent of polled security leaders said that a frictionless digital customer experience was a priority for their organizations, yet 37 percent still rely on usernames and passwords to authenticate digital customers. Furthermore, 23 percent said their organization had suffered at least one cybersecurity incident as a result of unauthorized access to these accounts in the past year, while 17 percent were unsure.

In addition, 96 percent of respondents said they expect the same or increased budget for securing digital trust in the year ahead. Top investment targets include new tools to improve the security of user authentication and account access and a frictionless customer experience. But how will organizations meet these dual objectives? That’s one of the key questions the ISMG survey answered.

Top 5 Key Findings

Though the survey is brimming with eye-opening findings, the following were among the most compelling and illustrative of the challenges and opportunities leaders face when trying to improve the customer experience and create digital growth.

Source: ISMG 2018 Digital Identity Trust Survey

What Did We Learn About the State of Digital Identity Trust?

The biggest takeaways from the ISMG survey put most organizations’ current customer experience into perspective, but they also show great opportunities for optimization. We’re learning that organizations are focused on improving customers’ digital experience and have budget allotments to do so. However, they may be using authentication methods that are not only frustrating for their customers, but causing other challenges as well. These include abandonment into more expensive channels like call centers, vulnerabilities that lead to data loss and current authentication methods that impede digital business growth.

Unless their authentication and verification methods are upgraded, a majority of organizations budgeting for digital identity trust improvements in 2019 will continue to face the challenge of finding the right balance between security and the customer experience. Customer feedback tells us that current solutions are inefficient.

To learn more about what it takes to successfully build digital identity trust within your organization, download the complete “2018 Digital Identity Trust Survey” today.