Few have the power to crunch data the way Equifax does, and today the company revealed numbers from its survey of those in IT.
Nearly nine in 10 of the professionals surveyed say in the trade-off between improving customer experience and improving cybersecurity, customer experience wins the battle of the budget.
The Equifax report says when survey respondents break down their investments, nearly 10 percent more is allocated toward customer experience improvements versus security.
"More than half of IT professionals use legacy technologies to support their authentication strategies, which is alarming. If IT doesn't prioritize adopting more advanced solutions and processes, they leave their organizations and their customers vulnerable to fraud, which will negatively impact the customer experience," said Ken Allen, senior vice president of global identity and fraud at Equifax. "Customer experience and security can't be an either-or thing for organizations anymore."
Cost, effort and time involved to implement, and staff resources are the top barriers deterring survey respondents from doing more about security.
Also worth noting from the survey is a growing interest in biometrics for authentication:
"While passwords are still the most frequently used ID verification/authentication method by IT professionals surveyed, many are interested in implementing biometrics or federated digital identity. Physical biometrics bested behavioral biometrics, with 64 percent of IT professionals expressing interest in adopting for their organizations. Most felt physical biometrics would be better for the customer experience."
The use of biometrics is something we're hearing more about from the SecureWorld Advisory Councils, and it will certainly be a topic of discussion at our regional cybersecurity conferences in 2019.
