Remember "Do no evil"?

This sounds like another bogus role they'll ditch once they get their Nasdaq listing and need to make profits for their shareholders.

I'd probably trust any organisation with a role like this even less. It sounds like an organisation that doesnt think it can be trusted.

I work in the space, this articles is kind of written in the style of "If you know, you know".

This role is becoming popular because customers and prospects are demanding more and more information about a company's internal controls and processes before committing to buying. Mega companies have cared about this stuff for ages. Historically, the need was met with Audits. A big ticket item that gets cooked into the price of a $$$$ deal. The buyer sends their people into the vendor to validate controls are in place. That type of stuff still happens on big deals, but it's essentially coming down stream to your every day deal. Often, as a byproduct of a compliance need (like SOC II).

You'll likely see this role dealing directly with customers to answer questions about compliance, security, and controls. Essentially, it's like a mini-audit.

So companies have now realized that they need to have trust with their customers? That they need to protect their customers data? And that someone in the company should be concerned about it?

This seems more like corporate CYA than anything else. “well we did hire a trust officer and trust officers are trustworthy.”

Is this just title inflation for the PR team?

The article doesn't really say anything beyond "CTrO positions exist and think tanks think they're not a trend."

I really like the old fashion way of Apple with only three C. CEO, CFO, and COO. Nothing else. Others are at best SVPs.

Unrelated: don't recall I heard this term (chief trust officer) before and immediately started questioning what its abbreviation will look like since CTO is already reserved. Turned out, from the article, to be CTrO.

You earn trust by doing the right thing by users/customers on a sustained basis.

It's not something you get by appointing someone to the board, someone who will be unknown to the vast majority of users of a product/service.

At best they'll do no harm I guess.

CTrO == CISO with marketing spin.

That title will age like milk

I will never trust a chief trust officer…

This is probably cheaper than re-engineering the actual SaaS product to build trust..

Because nobody trusts them?

>implying the rest of the company is not trustworthy

does this feel to anyone else like hiring a Chief Fall Guy? Securing data is and should be under the chief technical officer or the chief security officer, depending on how the org is structured, rendering this position redundant. The pattern I bet we see emerge is gonna be one where it's rather a cushy gig for a while but if there's a breach you're expected to resign or be fired so that the company can give us the old "the people responsible have been sacked". Like the moderately racist legends of tribes in a land untouched by modern civilization who designate a king and let him live in luxury for as long as times are good, and then behead him as a sacrifice at the first crop failure.

The irony, it burns...

Remember to always ask if your Trust officer was in the IDF.

Probably because everyone knows most SaaSes are slimy schemes to lock customers in and exploit them for every last penny that can be wrung out of them.

If you want trust, you don't need a Chief Officer for it---you just need a product that works well and a business strategy that doesn't rely on making your product slowly worse and more expensive until all your customers hate you.

Ironic, considering the last thing anyone should ever trust is a corporation who's sole goal is extracting profits at all costs.

This position is meant to shovel shit faster than the customers can figure it out.

Progress!

smfh

lol no they're not

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