“Companies that invest in privacy achieve tangible results.

According to Cisco, companies that invest in improving their privacy practices will experience tangible benefits from these investments. This is what Cisco’s 2019 Data Privacy Benchmark Study shows. The study shows that there is a demonstrable link between good privacy practices and business benefits.

According to Cisco’s survey (PDF), these business benefits include shorter sales cycles, but also fewer – and less costly – data leaks. Cisco’s Chief Privacy Officer Michelle Dennedy said that organizations are now taking privacy more and more seriously. Data is the new currency and we see that organizations are seeing real business benefits from their investments in protecting their data.

Better results

Cisco’s research shows that the implementation of the European Privacy Directive General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) has a real impact on companies’ business results. Customers are increasingly concerned about their privacy. Companies that invest in this, notice that the duration of the delays in their sales due to privacy concerns among customers, has decreased: 3.4 weeks versus 5.4 weeks for organisations that are not or hardly ready for the GDPR. The average slowdown in sales to current customers was 3.9 weeks, a sharp decline from the 7.8 week slowdown reported a year ago.

Companies that meet the requirements of GDPR claim to have fewer data leaks. If there is a data leak, fewer records are affected and the system failure is shorter. The likelihood of a significant financial loss after a data breach was also considerably lower. In addition, three quarters of respondents said they experience more general benefits from their privacy investments. This includes greater effectiveness and more innovative power because they have appropriate data controls at their disposal. They also achieve more competitive advantage and operational efficiency because they have organised and categorised their data.

The Cisco study also showed that 37 percent of the companies that comply with the GDPR had to deal with a data breach that cost more than $500,000, compared to 66 percent of the organizations that comply least with the AVG.