The Charter of Trust (CoT) and the Digital Trust Forum (DTF) are to join forces and merge under the Charter of Trust banner to form a joint initiative for greater cybersecurity and digital trust. With this the Charter of Trust also intends to devote more attention to the topic of trustworthy artificial intelligence (AI) in the future.

The CoT was launched at the Munich Security Conference in February 2018 by Siemens and eight partners from the industrial sector. The DTF was formed in Berlin in May 2019 as an initiative of Bosch. With that Bosch will also join the CoT. The world’s leading logistics company Deutsche Post DHL Group has decided to join the cybersecurity initiative in addition, bringing the number of Charter of Trust members up to 17 four years after it was first signed.

“Overcoming reservations and building up trust will be crucial success factors in digital business – and this is more effective with the two initiatives working together. In addition, Bosch brings to the Charter of Trust its deep expertise in artificial intelligence,” said Dr. Tanja Rückert, Chief Digital Officer at Robert Bosch GmbH and a new member of the Charter of Trust’s Board of Directors.

“Cybersecurity is the key to building people’s confidence in digitalization,” said Cedrik Neike, Member of the Managing Board of Siemens AG and CEO Digital Industries. “And we’re significantly stronger if we work together to make our networked world more resilient. By merging the two initiatives, and by bringing on board our new partners, the Charter of Trust will gain even greater diversity and broaden its perspective to cover different industries and countries.”

“As a company, we inherit a long tradition of secure and fast transport of confidential information. But for us as a company, privacy of letters no longer applies exclusively to the postal service. In the digital environment, we also effectively protect our customers’ information along the entire supply chain. By becoming a new member of the Charter of Trust, we want to embrace exchange on supply chain security, because ultimately security incidents may have severe implications on all parties involved,” said David Thornewill, Group CISO of Deutsche Post DHL Group.

Over the last four years, the Charter of Trust has already launched a wealth of measures to enhance cybersecurity – including “Security by Default”, which takes cybersecurity into account right from the design phase and provides products with preconfigured security measures. In addition, the CoT partners have defined established baseline requirements for their suppliers in order to further enhance cybersecurity along supply chains. The main focus in the next phase will be to implement a cross-industry approach to the evaluation of supply chain security. In this context, the growing Charter of Trust community will provide mainly small and medium-sized enterprises with information, training and other resources.

At the Munich Security Conference in February 2018, Siemens and eight partners from industry signed the world’s first joint charter for greater cybersecurity. In addition to Siemens and the Munich Security Conference, the signatories include AES, Airbus, Allianz, Atos, Bosch, Dell Technologies, Deutsche Post DHL Group, IBM, Infineon Technologies AG, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, NTT, NXP Semiconductors, SGS, TotalEnergies and TÜV SÜD.

The CoT initiative also collaborates regularly with various global authorities and scientific institutions to drive forward the topic of cybersecurity internationally and achieve harmony across national borders and organizational boundaries. Furthermore, the CoT initiative has created the Associated Partner Forum, which institutions such as Germany’s Federal Office for Information Security (BSI), the Spanish National Cryptologic Center (CCN), TU Graz and the Hasso Plattner Institute for Digital Engineering GmbH (HPI) have joined. The Canadian Centre for Cybersecurity, Cyber Readiness Institute, CyberNB, Cyber Peace Institute, Global Cyber Alliance and Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade & Industry (METI) and Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communication (MIC) have also recently signed up as associate partners.

The global economy is beginning to realize that increased networking goes hand in hand with an escalating risk of cybercrime: the Allianz Risk Barometer found that companies around the globe consider cyber risk as their number one threat in 2022.

Siemens, AES, Airbus, Allianz, Atos, Bosch, Dell Technologies, Deutsche Post DHL Group, IBM, Infineon, MHI, MSC, NTT, NXP, SGS, TotalEnergies and TÜV SÜD