Inaugural members are cybersecurity and identity experts from large, mid-size, and startup firms

Telesign today announced the launch of Trust Alliance, a group of global digital trust leaders who will share insights and best practices that any organization can use to bolster their fraud protections and maintain trust with their customers and other important stakeholders. Trust Alliance brings together experts in cybersecurity, digital identity, and product development to drive more awareness and advocacy around the importance of cultivating a sustained relationship built on trust between organizations and their customers.

“Trust is the currency of the digital economy, which is why we are excited to provide a platform for experts in the field to more broadly share their expertise,” said Telesign CMO Kristi Melani. “The more we educate buyers and sellers about the profound impact of trust on our behaviors, the more we keep trust at the forefront of our minds. Our goal is to amplify the insights and best practices of leading experts that any organization — large, small, corporate, governmental, or nonprofit — can access for free. We seek to arm organizations with knowledge they can use to better protect people from digital fraud and forge stronger bonds of trust with customers and other important stakeholders.”

Melani added that the idea to convene a group of digital trust experts originated from Telesign’s Trust Index research, which revealed that 87% of U.S. consumers feel the companies they engage with online are responsible for protecting their digital privacy. “When we saw the data, we knew we needed to do more, including pulling together like-minded experts to help organizations learn how to protect people better,” Melani said. “This is not simply about what tools to use, but how to think about, and take responsibility for, fraud protection.”

Telesign will feature and spotlight Trust Alliance members and their expertise through various activities, including complimentary content, events, speaking engagements, and more. The first piece of content is a new white paper, “The Currency of Business: How Experts Gain and Maintain Digital Trust in their Organizations,” written by Grace Trinidad, Research Director for IDC’s Future of Trust Practice. In the white paper, Trinidad points out that organizations that invest in trust “enjoy greater customer loyalty, increased market share, increased collaboration and innovation, and increased customer willingness to use novel technologies like AI and GenAI.”

The inaugural members of the Trust Alliance are:

• Shinesa Cambric, a cybersecurity leader, best-selling author, and startup advisor. Cambric serves on the advisory board of Stack Identity, is a certification content advisor for Computing Technology Industry Association (CompTIA) and leads a team at Microsoft focused on designing innovative solutions for global organizations to identify, detect, protect, and respond to emerging threats against digital identities. Among her recommendations are to have empathy for customers, and the experiences they have with your products: “The number one way to break trust is forgetting the human element. Lacking empathy influences the way you build products, so think about accessibility within your projects, think about the experience that humans on the other end are going to have. If they have a terrible experience, more than likely they’re not going to trust coming back to your products again and again.”

• Daniel Lee is a product lead and fraud expert at Persona, a leading unified identity platform. Formerly an aerospace and software engineer who built tailored business intelligence software at Fortune 100 companies, Lee now leads the development of a comprehensive suite of verification products that enables businesses to create personalized identity experiences for any use case. Lee frames security and privacy controls as table stakes: “Organizations need to show from a top-down perspective that security, privacy, and keeping up to date with all the latest security trends and privacy best practices is critical.”

• Michael Woodson is an accomplished security professional with a proven track record of developing and implementing robust information security strategies to safeguard organizational assets, mitigate potential threats, and optimize security architectures for organizations such as Sonesta Hotels, Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA) and Infosys. He is a lecturer at Northeastern University and Cambridge College on Information Security Management and Network Security. Woodson notes there are consequences that come with breaking trust or not investing adequately in trust: “Yes, trust is an investment, but it's an investment in our sustainability. It’s an investment in long-term trust versus short-term gain. We might gain something, but are those gains sustainable? The commitment is very strategic, and if you're in it to win it, all of us will win. Our customers will love us. Our brand will be sustainable, and it will grow. But when you lose your reputation, it's difficult to get it back.”

• Guillaume Bourcy founded Oofty, a pioneering mobile identity consulting firm, a majority stake in which was later acquired by Global Telco Consult (GTC), a leader in Telecommunication consulting. He has spearheaded business development, product, and data science teams at companies that serve tech giants and 500 Fortune companies. Among the issues Bourcy addresses is the need for processes that build trust in AI: “Building trust is about transparency. That’s why businesses should provide clear explanations of how AI systems operate and the data they utilize to make decisions. Making AI explainable will create a trust-bond with customers and clients.”

• Michael Habermann is Senior Director of Operations for Radial Payment Solutions, a B2C provider of Payment, Fraud and Chargeback solutions. He leads a team of Client Success, Product, Payment, and Fraud Leaders who are hyper focused on providing a safe and seamless transactional experience. Habermann has more than 25 years of experience on the Merchant and Vendor side, leading teams that manage digital payments, fraud protection, digital identity, and chargeback processes. He believes that “Customer experience is a team sport between Marketing, Product, Operations, and Fulfillment.”

Telesign is the leading provider of customer identity and engagement solutions. Trust Alliance is part of Telesign’s Continuous Trust Authority™ initiative dedicated to helping make the digital world a safer place.

To learn more about Trust Alliance, and to download the new white paper, please visit the Trust Alliance Hub.

About Trust Alliance

Trust Alliance is a group of global digital trust leaders who share insights and best practices that any organization can utilize to bolster their fraud protections and maintain trust with their customers and other important stakeholders. Trust Alliance includes experts in cybersecurity, digital identity, product development, e-commerce, and more. Because of its mission to make the digital world a more trustworthy place for everyone, Telesign convened the Trust Alliance to help broaden access to industry best practices on digital trust.

About Telesign

Telesign, a part of the Proximus Group, provides Continuous Trust™ to leading global enterprises by connecting, protecting, and defending their digital identities. Telesign verifies over five billion unique phone numbers a month, representing half of the world’s mobile users, and provides insights into the remaining billions. The company’s powerful machine learning and extensive data science deliver identity risk recommendations with a unique combination of speed, accuracy, and global reach. Telesign solutions provide fraud protection, secure communications, and enable the digital economy by helping companies and customers to engage with confidence.

Learn more at www.telesign.com and follow us on X, formerly known as Twitter, at @Telesign.

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