The rise of the Chief Trust Officer: A game changing new C-suite role

With regulatory pressures mounting, AI adoption accelerating, and consumer skepticism at an all-time high, trust is fast becoming a defining issue for organisations that want to preserve and maintain stakeholder confidence.

And this is no easy task as cyber threats escalate, data regulations multiply, and public concerns around AI governance and accountability grow.

In response, UK business leaders are prioritizing the creation of a new C-Suite executive role: the Chief Trust Officer (CTrO). Indeed, a recent study of 1,000 UK business leaders found that 97% believe the CTrO role is urgently needed to improve trust in data, technology and governance.

Responsible for building and maintaining trust with customers, employees, and stakeholders, the emergence of the CTrO role signals a marked shift from simply defending infrastructure. Instead it strategically unites customer trust, compliance, security and regulatory management.

A pivotal role: unifying security, privacy and compliance

Having first risen to prominence in US boardrooms, the role of the CTrO is now rapidly gaining momentum in the UK.

According to UK business leaders, three key factors are driving this shift. The rise of AI (37%), tightening cross-border data regulations (34%), and persistent cybersecurity threats such as ransomware (34%).

In parallel, growing regulatory scrutiny and evolving customer expectations in relation to digital safety and privacy means that the proactive protection of trust is now viewed as a mission-critical priority.

Asked to identify the top priorities for CTrOs, UK leaders highlighted two primary focus areas: customer trust and reputation management (31%) and rapid crisis response to issues such as disinformation and data breaches (30%).

Yet, a CTrO can have a very broad range of responsibilities that bridge the gap between technical security, legal, compliance and communications functions.

These include ensuring compliance with data protection regulations, overseeing data privacy and security standards, establishing guidelines for the responsible use of AI, and communicating trust-related information with customers, regulators and partners.

Boardroom shake-up

Many UK organizations acknowledge that corporate trust responsibilities are often distributed across COOs, CISOs and CIOs – an arrangement that most feel is ineffective. For security and technology leaders, this fragmentation often creates material operational risk.

When accountability for security, privacy, compliance and communications is split across functions, incident response can slow, decision-making becomes unclear, and escalation paths to the board are inconsistent.

During high-pressure events such as ransomware attacks, CISOs are frequently required to manage technical containment while navigating legal exposure, regulatory engagement and external communications without clear authority or alignment.

The introduction of a CTrO addresses this challenge by providing a single executive mandate to coordinate risk decisions across technical, legal and governance domains.

By aligning security architecture with organizational risk appetite and board-level oversight, the role enables faster, more coherent responses to emerging threats while allowing security teams to focus on prevention, resilience and recovery.

Skills and capabilities

Whilst the CTrO is primarily responsible for trust initiatives, to ensure that they are operationalized across multiple functions, they must work closely with the CISO, General Counsel, and other leaders. Only then can trust truly be turned into a strategic function that is measurable, accountable, and directly tied to business resilience.

To fulfil these responsibilities, CTrOs will need a broad range of skills and capabilities. In addition to an understanding of cyber security and data privacy and regulatory frameworks, a deep knowledge of AI governance and digital risk will be a must have. They will also need exceptional communication skills.

Critically, the role demands the credibility to operate at board level and the authority to challenge risk decisions when necessary.

This requires the ability to translate technical, regulatory and AI-related risks into clear business implications, enabling informed executive decision-making and stronger alignment between security priorities and organizational objectives.

Why 2026 is the year of the CTrO

Gone are the days when cyber security and data protection incidents were viewed as solely IT issues. Today, events such as these represent board-level crises that can significantly impact brand reputations and undermine customer confidence.

In a world where corporate trust is emerging as a critical strategic driver of corporate performance, business resilience, and customer acquisition and retention, it is increasingly being recognized as a company’s most valuable asset.

Hard won, and easily lost, appointing a CTrO enables organizations to go beyond simply defending infrastructure and focus on building and maintaining the trust that is essential for long-term survival and growth.

By centralizing the oversight of digital trust into a single executive and ending scattergun responsibilities across the boardroom, organizations that appoint a CTrO will be able to create an effective enterprise-wide strategy that embeds security and trust across their operations.

With today’s customers, regulators, employees and investors increasingly expecting this to be a defined C-suite responsibility, appointing a CTrO signals a clear collective commitment to building, maintaining and earning trust.

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