Techstrong TV — Thu, May 21

The Trust Problem in Cybersecurity — and How to Fix It

Alan Shimel with Ross McKerchar

In this episode of TechStrong TV, Alan Shimel sits down with Ross McKerchar, CISO at Sophos, 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 (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. Ross covers the breadth of the Sophos portfolio — from endpoint and email to firewall and a 30,000-customer MDR business — 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.