ARLINGTON, Va. -- According to a report released yesterday by the Retail Industry Leaders Association (RILA) in partnership with Retail Systems Research (RSR), more than ever before retailers are viewing the issues of privacy and security as strategic imperatives within their organizations. Privacy not only fulfills brand-promise but also allows retailers to successfully move forward with cross-channel retailing.

"For 47 percent of overall respondents, proactively addressing privacy and security issues enables them to move forward with an aggressive cross-channel agenda," said Steve Rowen, co-author of the report, in a press release. "Customers are researching, shopping, and returning any way they please, in any channel, in any combination of channels - in ways that were not predicted even a few short years ago. Retailers know this, and for nearly half of them, there is a strong recognition that privacy and security are a prerequisite to keeping a competitive position in the game."

"Building Trust and Growing the Brand: The Role of Privacy and Security in Retail 2010" found that 87 percent of retailers believe that recent publicized breaches have raised consumer awareness about payment data. Seventy-two percent of retailers shared that privacy is a concern for their customers and retail products and services require the protection of sensitive information.

"Retailers place the highest value on their customer relationships and are committed to safeguarding the personally identifiable information of shoppers," said Casey Chroust, executive vice president for retail operations. "Retailers have gone to great lengths to incorporate privacy as a strategic component of their daily operations and remain vigilant in protecting customer data while providing the value customers want. When utilized properly, customer-specific data can be used to enhance the shopping experience for consumers."

The report concludes that there is no strategic advantage to addressing the data security and privacy imperative?"only strategic disadvantage if these challenges are not addressed. Customer data has strategic importance to the company??s ability to execute on its brand promise, and systems that create, retrieve, update, and delete that data must comply with corporate policies regarding privacy and data security. Retailers acknowledge that the ability to ensure consumer privacy and data security is vital to the brand promise and the inability to do so would impede successful execution of a cross-channel strategy.