Cisco study: Data privacy issues can delay sales | Latest news

Up to 65% of global businesses have sales cycle delays because of privacy issues, which is exacerbated by the company’s lack of ‘privacy maturity.

Privacy issues are not only a matter of compliance with the forthcoming General Data Protection (GDPR) regulation. Privacy concerns may also be bad for completing sales.

This is a key step in Cisco's new report, Benchmark's study of privacy policy. "65% of businesses around the world are looking for a" significant sales cycle delay "due to privacy concerns, according to a survey of nearly 3,000 global security professionals in 25 countries.

Two-thirds of respondents said privacy of data could cause an average sales delay of 7.8 weeks. Causes may include the failure of sales teams to address customer concerns, inappropriate corporate policy or technical issues. In addition, the sales cycle delay may be directly affected by the level of maturity of the company's privacy.

Respondents were asked to self-assess their privacy margins by using the American Institute of Certified Accountants (GAPP), a model based on generally accepted privacy principles. There are five levels: ad hoc, repeatable, defined, managed and optimized. About a fifth of respondents have self-assessed their businesses.

On the basis of these data, the average sales delay of 16.8 weeks for ad hoc companies with ad hoc privacy was the lowest, but the average delay slowed down when the maturity level improved.

At the highest level, people with optimized privacy maturity reported an average of 3.4 weeks of sales late. Not surprisingly, companies with higher privacy have also experienced lower losses. Most of the privately-immature companies had the highest percentage - 74% - of cyberattactic losses over the last 12 months of over $ 500,000, while the most correct (optimized) was only 39 percent.

In addition to maturity levels, privacy concerns related to privacy concerns have been correlated with both the physical location of the company and its industry. Government and healthcare firms showed an average 19 week and 10.2 week sales delay, while those in the public service, pharmaceutical and manufacturing industries showed the shortest delay, three weeks or less.

Geographically, Latin America and Mexico have the longest delays in protecting privacy, while China and Russia have the shortest. In the US, the average delay is 7.7 weeks.