In the face of rising global cyber threats, over 50 CISOs have called for greater international alignment of cybersecurity regulations to strengthen defenses and reduce fragmentation. This message was echoed at RSAC 2025, where experts from the OECD, European Commission, academia, and industry emphasized the need for principle-based collaboration. The Charter of Trust, a long-time advocate for regulatory harmonization, continues to support coordinated, effective approaches that prioritize clarity over complexity.

We are delighted to welcome Richard Skalt, Advocacy Manager at TÜV SÜD, as the new Leader of the Advocacy Workstream at the Charter of Trust. Richard steps into the role following María del Pino González-Junco, who recently assumed the position of Chair of the Global External Engagement Working Group.

With a strong background in advocacy and a forward-looking vision, Richard brings renewed energy to our mission of shaping a secure digital future. As he puts it:

“My motivation is to preserve and build upon the strong foundation of advocacy activities we’ve developed over the past years. At the same time, I’m committed to ensuring we’re in a position to shape the policies that will define how our business model and operations evolve in the future – including the cybersecurity of products and systems, the use, deployment, and distribution of robust AI solutions, as well as cloud security and secure datacenters.”

In a world defined by accelerating digital transformation and increasingly complex regulatory challenges, principled leadership and effective collaboration are more vital than ever. Under Richard’s leadership, the Advocacy Workstream will continue to engage policymakers, raise public awareness, and strengthen education around key issues such as cybersecurity, AI governance, and secure digital infrastructures.

The Charter of Trust is proud to announce María del Pino González-Junco, Cybersecurity Alliances Manager at Siemens, as the new Chairwoman of the Global External Engagement Working Group. Her appointment marks a significant step forward in our shared mission to advance cybersecurity through strong international collaboration.

Pino’s election follows a dynamic Collaboration Week in Denmark, where Charter of Trust partners from around the world came together to align on strategy, strengthen partnerships, and reaffirm our commitment to a secure digital future. As a longstanding leader within the advocacy workstream, Pino has been instrumental in fostering open dialogue with key external stakeholders and promoting cybersecurity awareness across industries and institutions.

“A reliable digital world can only thrive if public and private institutions build trust and cyber-resilience together, share their expertise, and support society in this digital journey. Those are our goals at the Charter of Trust,” says Pino.

She takes over the role from Sumit Chanda, COO/CISO at Atos, who has guided the working group with vision and energy. We are pleased to share that Dr Chanda has since been elected Co-Chair of the Charter of Trust by the Board of Directors in February—ensuring his continued impact on the initiative’s strategic direction.

We extend our sincere thanks to Sumit for his outstanding leadership and warmly congratulate Pino on her new role.

The Charter of Trust has kicked off its most pivotal week of the year with a high-level meeting of its Board of Directors in Munich. This influential gathering brought together key decision-makers to reflect on the past year’s successes and set the strategic direction for the future of global cybersecurity.

Under the leadership of Chairwoman Natalia Oropeza, the Charter of Trust has strengthened its internal structure, successfully integrating new Partners and Associated Partners while enhancing collaboration through four dedicated working groups. Externally, the alliance has made a significant impact, engaging global audiences through media, conferences, panel discussions, and key industry events.

Looking ahead to 2025, the Charter of Trust enters a new chapter with a co-chair leadership model. Dr. Sumit Chanda, Global CISO at Eviden, and Ralf Schneider, Head of Cybersecurity at Allianz, will take the helm, bringing a dynamic vision focused on building resilient ecosystems, harmonizing frameworks, and advancing cybersecurity education.

A special thank you to Benedikt Franke, Vice-Chairman & CEO of the Munich Security Conference (MSC), for his insightful keynote on the evolving cyber threat landscape and the vital role the Charter of Trust plays in shaping global cybersecurity solutions.

With a bold vision for 2025, the Charter of Trust continues to drive innovation, collaboration, and trust in the digital world.

We're thrilled to announce that our Charter of Trust Chairwoman Natalia Oropeza has been featured in the annual IT edition of the brand eins magazine!

In an interview with Dorit Kowitz, Natalia dives deep into the pressing issues facing the cybersecurity landscape, explaining how the Charter of Trust bundles the expertise of different businesses across several regions to stay resilient in the face of evolving threats. As Natalia Oropeza says: "We all win if cybercrime doesn’t win."

Here are three key insights from her interview:
🔑 Collaboration is essential: No single organization can tackle cyber threats alone. The Charter of Trust is a prime example that businesses nowadays are more transparent when it comes to attacks and that sharing information in this field can be beneficial.
🔑 Addressing the digital skills gap: The Charter of Trust is working to address the global shortage of cybersecurity professionals by encouraging diversity and actively promoting opportunities for women to join the field.
🔑 Unified regulations: Harmonizing global cybersecurity standards will reduce vulnerabilities, helping businesses and governments combat threats more effectively.

The full interview is available here: https://lnkd.in/gRm6ZDGC

We are in the middle of Hashtag#CyberSecurityAwarnessMonth and many of our Charter of Trust Partners are promoting it with great initiatives. One of the programs that we want to highlight is last week’s panel organized by Allianz talking about “Security in light of (gen)AI”.

The complexity and urgency of this topic gathered a lot of interest, with 600+ attendees throughout the whole panel, which was composed of Jon-Paul Jones, COO at AZ Commercial, Firas Ben Hassan, GenAI expert & Manager of AllianzGPT at AZ Technology, Dr. Martin J. Krämer, External Security Awareness Advocate at KnowBe4, and Dr Sumit Chanda, Global CISO at Eviden & Chair of the Global External Engagement Working Group at the Charter of Trust.

We are pleased to see Dr. Sumit Chanda from Eviden bringing in his unique CISO insight on what these emerging technologies mean in day-to-day cybersecurity practices and bringing in the Charter of Trust perspective on this topic as well.

Thank you, Ervin Cihan and Haydn Griffiths for inviting other CoT Partners and for the great initiatives that Allianz is putting together within this year’s Security Awareness Month. And special thanks to Heather Armond for the great moderation.

Detlef Houdeau, Senior Director, Business Development at Infineon Technologies was a speaker at the inaugural UK/EU Summit organized by our newest Associated Partners Shared Assessments.

💡Under the theme “Risk to Resilience” the first event of this series was held in London and brought together professionals from different industries and regions. Detlef participated in the panel about the complex regulatory landscape and emphasized that new legislation like the EU AI Act, DORA and Hashtag#NIS2 continue to push the standard of care on cybersecurity and other risks.

Thanks to Shared Assessments for organizing such an amazing event and inviting the Charter of Trust to participate in this high-class panel alongside Andrew Moyad, CEO at Shared Assessments.

Strong networks and effective cooperation are the key to successfully shaping the digital future in Germany. Cybersecurity is a team effort, and that was again visible last week at the 36th Cyber Security Day in Berlin.

🌐On 26 September 2024, the Bundesamt für Sicherheit in der Informationstechnik (BSI), Alliance for Cyber Security, and the DIHK invited experts, companies, authorities and political decision-makers to jointly strengthen Germany's cyber resilience.

The event was a great mix of policy debate, practical exchange, workshop and networking under the motto ‘Stronger Together: Greater Resilience through Cooperation’.

✨ One of the highlights of the day was the closing panel with Claudia Plattner, President of the BSI, Dr. Stefan Saatmann, Deputy Head Berlin Office at Siemens, Konstantin von Notz, Member of the Bundestag for B90/Greens, and Alexander von Gernler, German Informatics Society, interchanging ideas to foster resilience through collaboration. Initiatives like the CoT baseline requirements and its huge potential for international harmonizing cybersecurity regulations were discussed as well.

Let’s all work together so that closer cooperation between the BSI and businesses bring more tangible effects to increase digital resilience. Special thanks to Nils Hasenau for providing the excellent photos and also to Simon Ulmer and Ralf König for attending the event.

The Charter of Trust at the Nordic Cyber Summit
What a great opportunity for Morten Kromann, Head of Industrial Security Denmark at Siemens, to present the Charter of Trust perspective on cybersecurity regulations like Hashtag#NIS2 at the Nordic Cyber Summit in Copenhagen.

This year the summit was again a formidable event to engage with top cybersecurity experts, share insights, and discuss strategies to navigate the ever-evolving threat landscape in the Nordic region with the theme “Fortifying the Future: Building Cyber Resilience in a Transformed World”.

A main aspect highlighted by Morten was the discrepancies between the NIS2 directive’s incidents reporting timeframe and related provisions adopted in other legislations. These regulatory overlaps create difficult compliance environments for industry and costly operational pressures which add to the fragmentation of the market instead of harmonizing it. That is why the Charter of Trust emphasizes streamlining reporting requirements stemming from these different legislative frameworks and developing single entry points for reporting on the national level.

These and more points have been discussed during our Security-by-default Webinar on the 29th of October. See the events section on this website to find the recording of the webinar.

We are excited to announce that Shared Assessments has officially joined the Charter of Trust Associated Partners Forum (APF), further reinforcing our mission to enhance global cybersecurity standards.

The APF is a collaborative network that brings together regulators, research institutes, universities, and think tanks with the Charter of Trust's contributing partners to strengthen the digital security landscape. The APF has grown over the years and already counts more than 15 partners from the Americas, Europe, and Asia.

"Shared Assessments is excited and honored to join the Charter of Trust community of cybersecurity leaders and practitioners, and we are committed to working with the organisation to improve the resilience and risk posture of their membership and their associated suppliers. Since its founding in 2018, the Charter of Trust has promoted continuous improvement in the standard of care for cybersecurity risk management. At Shared Assessments, we are fully aligned with the Charter’s vision, including the organisation’s 10 Principles and the philosophy that cybersecurity ‘is everyone’s task.’" says CEO Andrew Moyad.

Founded in 2005, Shared Assessments is a global membership organization dedicated to developing the best practices, education, and products to drive third-party risk assurance. Shared Assessments is a practitioner led organization with over 1’500 active professionals available to network across their 13 global committees disseminating papers, studies, and further research.

At Shared Assessments, the belief in collaboration and the exchange of knowledge plays a critical role in tackling today’s cybersecurity challenges. Together with them, Charter of Trust is working towards creating a stronger digital landscape across industries and borders by sharing the extensive knowledge our partners have.

We are proud to share that Charter of Trust partners actively contributed during the G7-focused workshop entitled “International Cybersecurity Regulatory Dialogue,” organised by Wilton Park and LSE on September 3-4 in the UK.

The event gathered high level representatives from G7 governments, industry and academia to discuss and identify opportunities to improve international coordination and reciprocity of cybersecurity regulations, including with respect to AI’s impact on cybersecurity. As part of this workshop, our Charter of Trust Partners highlighted the importance of advancing greater international alignment of cybersecurity regulations by providing concrete examples of challenges and risks posed by regulatory fragmentation faced by industries operating at a global level.

We hope the insights from this event will inspire our policy leaders to drive international cybersecurity regulatory alignment in the coming months. As always, the Charter of Trust remains a key alliance and an active participant in furthering the international public-private dialogue.

We are excited about the potential impact of these discussions and look forward to driving meaningful progress in international cybersecurity regulation.

We are thrilled to announce that Danfoss has officially joined the Charter of Trust alliance, further strengthening our commitment to advancing harmonised cybersecurity approaches to make the digital world of tomorrow safer.

The Charter of Trust is an industry alliance that brings together leading global companies to help establish and promote the highest standards of cybersecurity: “We are delighted to welcome Danfoss as part of the Charter of Trust. Their commitment to cybersecurity and their unique experience and expertise will further strengthen our collective efforts,” says Natalia Oropeza, Chairwoman of the Charter of Trust.

"At Danfoss, we engineer solutions that increase machine productivity, reduce emissions, lower energy consumption, and enable electrification. In an increasingly connected landscape, cybersecurity is crucial, and we firmly believe that overcoming cybersecurity challenges can only be achieved through collaboration and collective effort. Joining the Charter of Trust enables us to collaborate with industry leaders, share best practices, and address evolving cyber threats together," says Morten Pors Simonsen, Chief Information Officer, Danfoss.