Cisco’s 2019 Data Privacy Benchmark Study validates the link between good privacy practice and business benefits.
Organizations worldwide have been working steadily towards getting ready for GDPR. Within the study, 59% of organizations reported meeting all or most requirements, 29% expect to do so within a year, and 9% will take more than a year. By country, GDPR-readiness varied from 42% to 75%. Spain, Italy, UK and France were at the top of the range, while China, Japan and Australia were on the lower end.
GDPR-ready organizations cited a lower incidence of data breaches, fewer records impacted in security incidents, and shorter system downtimes. They also were much less likely to have a significant financial loss from a data breach. Only 37% of GDPR-ready companies experienced a data breach costing more than USD 500,000, compared with 64% of the least GDPR-ready companies.
Those organizations that invested in data privacy to meet GDPR experienced shorter delays due to privacy concerns in selling to existing customers: 3.4 weeks vs. 5.4 weeks for the least GDPR ready organizations. Overall the average sales delay was 3.9 weeks in selling to existing customers, down from 7.8 weeks reported a year ago.
More than 3,200 global security and privacy professionals in 18 countries across major industries responded to the Cisco 2019 Data Privacy Benchmark Study about their organizations’ privacy practices.
