Notifications
Clear all
Topic starter
06/09/2026 6:20 pm
TL;DR: French consumers are deeply embedded in digital services, but IDEMIA Secure Transactions’ IPSOS BVA study shows a widening gap between adoption, fraud concern, and real understanding of cyber risk, with security now outranking ease of use in service choice. The result is a governance problem for identity and transaction teams: trust must be designed into verification, authentication, and fraud controls, not left to user confidence.
NHIMG editorial — based on content published by Idemia: French consumers report a gap between digital adoption and cybersecurity awareness
By the numbers:
- 95% of French people consider themselves regular users of digital services.
- 78% are concerned about fraud via digital tools, and 80% fear the theft of their personal data.
- 47% recognize cyber risks but admit they don’t really understand them.
Questions worth separating out
Q: How can security teams balance user experience with stronger identity controls?
A: Design the process around the tasks employees need to complete, then remove unnecessary branching in login and recovery.
Q: Why do weak identity controls undermine customer trust so quickly in digital services?
A: Identity failures are visible to customers and often feel personal, because they expose data, disrupt access, or signal poor governance.
Q: What signs show that identity controls are too hard for users to accept?
A: Look for repeated abandonment during login or verification, rising help-desk contacts, account recovery misuse, and workarounds such as shared access or excessive resets.
Practitioner guidance
- Measure user trust at the control layer Track where users hesitate, abandon, or bypass security steps in identity verification, transaction approval, and account recovery flows.
- Review step-up authentication for clarity Make step-up authentication and device binding explainable in plain language so users understand why the control is triggered and what it protects.
- Align fraud controls to transaction risk Use risk-based policies to increase assurance only where the transaction or account state warrants it.
What's in the full report
Idemia's full press release covers the survey detail this post intentionally leaves for the source:
- The full country-by-country survey context across 11 markets, including the French-specific findings used here.
- The broader consumer-response breakdown on security, convenience, and trust in digital services.
- The discussion of quantum awareness and why respondents see it as a future cybersecurity risk.
- The Secure Transactions framing around encryption, tokenization, authentication, and crypto-agile chips.
👉 Read Idemia's study on digital adoption and cybersecurity awareness →
Digital adoption and cyber awareness: what security teams should make of it?
Explore further
06/09/2026 6:21 pm
Consumer trust is now an identity governance outcome, not a branding outcome. When security becomes the top criterion for choosing digital services, identity teams inherit a user-facing accountability problem. Authentication, recovery, and fraud controls must be understandable enough to support trust while still meeting assurance requirements. That is a practical extension of IAM and identity verification governance, not a separate communications task.
A question worth separating out:
Q: Should organisations treat post-quantum readiness as a governance issue now?
A: Yes. Even before migration deadlines, organisations need ownership, timelines, and a plain-language explanation of how cryptographic change affects identity assurance and digital trust. If the transition is unclear internally, it will be even harder to sustain confidence externally.
👉 Read our full editorial: Digital trust now depends on closing the awareness gap in cyber risk
