Digital Trust - Why trust is becoming the decisive success factor for digital offerings

Digitalisation opens up enormous opportunities - but also harbours risks that are by no means just of a technical nature. The decisive factor is whether users trust digital systems. This is precisely where the discussion about digital trust comes in.

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Translated with DeepL

Who do you trust? Your family and friends, your banks and insurance companies, your commune, canton and the federal government?

In the physical world, it is usually people who are close to us or with whom we have had positive experiences. In the digital world, the answer to this question quickly becomes complicated and opaque.

For service providers, digital trust is increasingly becoming a critical factor. If there is a lack of trust, digital services will not be used. This jeopardises not only individual business models, but also entire value chains in the long term.

In a pilot study funded by the SATW, researchers from the University of Zurich - Felix Gille, PhD, Markos Mpadanes, Federica Zavattaro - investigated what companies in Switzerland and worldwide understand by digital trust and how they promote and evaluate digital trust.

Read the study

Results and key findings

The key messages from interviews and literature research are clear: the importance of digital trust is increasing and the topic is becoming more and more strategically important. However, most companies are only at the beginning.

In particular, industry leaders could lead the way by

  • creating an overarching corporate culture as a core value
  • Promote employees and their digital skills
  • Develop and apply high technical standards for data security, data protection and traceability
  • Communicate values and risks transparently and comprehensibly to customers and other stakeholders
  • Actively involve managers in these developments

What is needed now

More sensitisation, practical assessment methods and concrete tools are needed to build digital trust. Best practices - from the financial sector, for example - could serve as a model for other sectors. In order to realise this, digital trust must be anchored in corporate management and compliance.

Why it matters

Trust not only characterises personal relationships, but increasingly also digital interactions. Without trust, innovations lose their impact.

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The SATW is committed to Digital Trust - become part of this development and contact us:

 Manuel Kugler

Manuel Kugler

Data & AI Programme Manager / Advanced Manufacturing