Ross McKerchar, CISO at Sophos, joins Alan Shimel on TechStrong TV to talk about why trust has become the most important — and most underdeveloped — currency in cybersecurity. Drawing on 19 years inside Sophos and findings from the brand-new 2026 Sophos Trust Reality Report (more than 5,000 organizations across 17 countries), Ross explains why customers struggle to assess vendor trustworthiness and what should replace today's broken supply chain questionnaires.

The conversation covers the breadth of the Sophos portfolio — from endpoint and email to firewall and one of the industry's largest MDR businesses, with more than 30,000 customers — and dives into the radical transparency approach behind Sophos's Pacific Rim report, the Secure by Design tailwind, and why "verifiable artifacts of maturity" like wide-scope bug bounties, fast and technical incident communication, and a credible CNA/CVE program tell you more about a vendor than any survey ever will.

Ross also shares why SBOMs remain a great idea that most buyers cannot yet use effectively, why 62% of respondents now question their vendors' trustworthiness, and what data point in this year's report wasn't on his bingo card.

Learn more at https://www.sophos.com