David Jefferies, Marketing Director, Pitney Bowes You Asked CRM relies on trust between business and customer. Consumers are constantly asked for personal information from a wide range of organisations, but who are the industries most trusted by UK citizens to safeguard this data? And which sectors must work harder to earn this trust?

Given the recent and frequent newspaper headlines detailing data breaches across both the public and private sector the issue of consumer trust is a hot-topic.

Since the security breach at the UK’s HM Revenue and Customs in November last year, the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has been notified of almost 100 data breaches by public, private and third sector organisations. Sector breakdown of the security breaches reported to the ICO is as follows:

• Public sector 62 breaches (66%)

• Private sector 28 breaches (30%)

• Third sector 4 breaches (4%)

There is clearly urgent work to be done across the board. The penalties for error are serious. Fines for those found guilty of data protection breaches vary depending on the size of the organisation and the seriousness of the breach. But for private sector firms the damage to brand image will echo far longer. And for Government, breaches at a central or local level will cost vast sums to rectify, not to mention the impact on voter confidence.

Our latest study asked UK citizens how much they trusted a range of organisations to keep their personal data secure.

GP’s emerge as the most trusted body - no great surprise. The age-old notion of confidentiality between doctor and patient seemingly extending to a belief that the surgery’s records management procedures are equally trustworthy.

However, the ranking of banks as second most trusted is more surprising. Again, there have been several high-profile news stories of banks being negligent with customer data. Banks face a dilemma in today’s highly competitive marketplace. The onus is on the bank to communicate in an ever more personalised fashion with its customers to prevent defection, and to tailor products to suit customer behaviours. But in order to operate in this ‘one-to-one’ fashion, banks must collect and retain increasingly detailed information on customers. Results suggest banks are making use of available technology to strike the correct balance here.

In contrast, trust for Government data protection procedures — at both Central and Local Government level — is approaching rock bottom. The public sector faces a massive challenge to appear more open, more transparent, whilst simultaneously slashing costs. Under e-government transformation guidelines Government departments are striving to encourage more citizen self-service across websites in order to eliminate some of the administrative burden and cost from service provision. However, damaging data-breaches — some on a monumental scale — will hardly persuade citizens to submit personalised information in this remote way.

That is not to say that the public sector is lackadaisical in its data protection approach. There are massive improvements being made, helped in no small part by the sector’s newfound maturity in embracing private sector expertise.

Least trusted of all sectors is socialnetworking. Businesses in this sector are riding the wave of hype and popularity but this is a wake-up call for those companies looking to continually drive and expand the business model in order to embed users further into the brand. Such trust must be earned.

Of course, in today’s multi-channel environment, personal data can exist in myriad forms. Emails, forms, letters, CD’s, voice and video recordings — if businesses or public sector bodies communicate across multiple channels then these organisations must be in a position to handle the responses that come back and must make clear decisions on what must be retained and what can be disposed of.

Data protection legislation is complex and ever-changing and, increasingly, organisations are turning to third-party specialists to offer ongoing consultancy. The technology exists to provide thorough and robust data protection across the board. Under today’s media spotlight, the penalty for skirting the issue can be catastrophic.

Pitney Bowes