There are a lot of conversations happening right now about cyber resilience. Most focus on technology: Detection speed. Recovery architecture. AI-enabled security operations.
All of those things matter. But after sitting down with Dr. Erika Voss, SVP, Global Chief Security & Data Officer at Blue Yonder, and Sam Archey, VP of Trust at Blue Yonder, I kept coming back to something much more fundamental: Trust.
Not trust as a slogan or marketing message, but trust as something operational. Something built deliberately over time and tested in the moments when organizations are under the most pressure.
That distinction can matter because resilience today isn’t just about recovering systems. It’s also about how organizations communicate, how they lead, and how they maintain confidence while uncertainty is still unfolding.
And for a company like Blue Yonder – operating at the center of global supply chains – that challenge becomes even more visible.
Watch the full episode.
Key Takeaways: What Modern Cyber Trust Actually Requires
- Trust is built through consistency, not perfection. Customers don’t typically expect immediate answers, but they do expect transparency and follow-through.
- Resilience is operational, not theoretical. Communication, coordination, and decision-making processes can matter as much as technical controls.
- Strong relationships built before an incident can determine how effectively teams respond during one.
- Supply chain resilience can raise the stakes because disruptions ripple across interconnected ecosystems.
- Organizations are increasingly judged not on whether incidents happen – but on how they respond when they do.
Resilience and Trust
One thing became clear very early in this discussion: Erika and Sam don’t think about resilience as a standalone security function. They think about it as a trust function.
Most organizations still separate these ideas:
- Security handles the technical response.
- Communications manages messaging.
- Leadership steps in when escalation is required.
But what Blue Yonder has built is much more integrated than that. Their approach recognizes that customer trust is shaped in real time by operational behavior – not just technical outcomes.
And in a supply chain environment, where countless organizations are interconnected, that operational behavior can become incredibly visible. When something breaks inside that ecosystem, the impact rarely stays isolated.
The Moment Trust Is Actually Tested
One of the strongest themes throughout the conversation was how quickly trust can be lost – and how intentional organizations must be to preserve it.
Erika put it bluntly: Customers are no longer evaluating whether companies experience incidents. That’s become table stakes in the modern threat landscape. What they are evaluating is something much more specific: Did they hear it from you first?
That distinction changes how organizations should think about incident response.
For years, the instinct during cyber events was often to hold communication until every detail was verified. But the reality today is that silence can create uncertainty faster than almost anything else.
Customers don’t typically expect complete answers in the first hour. They want acknowledgment. They want presence. They want to know that someone is actively working on the problem and willing to communicate transparently while things are still unfolding.
That’s where operational trust is built. And according to Erika and Sam, those first 60 minutes can matter more than most organizations realize.
Sneak Peek: Trust Is Critical in a Crisis
In this moment from the STRIVE conversation, we discuss how the first 60 minutes of response can determine customer confidence, reduce propagation delays, and shape long-term business relationships.
Building Trust Before You Need It
The trust Blue Yonder has built with customers wasn’t created during a single crisis. It was built through repeated interactions over time – through transparency, responsiveness, and operational discipline long before pressure entered the equation.
The same applies internally.
One thing both Erika and Sam emphasize is the importance of relationships between teams before incidents occur. Security, communications, engineering, operations, and leadership need to know how to work together ahead of time. Otherwise, the first real test of collaboration happens during a crisis, which can be the worst possible moment to establish operational alignment.
That’s why they spend so much time focusing on process maturity, stakeholder engagement, and tabletop exercises.
Not because those activities are theoretical. Because they create familiarity.
And familiarity helps reduce friction when pressure rises.
Why Tabletop Exercises Matter More Than Most Organizations Think
There was a particularly practical section of the conversation around tabletop exercises that I think a lot of organizations need to hear.
Too often, tabletops become compliance activities. Something organizations run once or twice a year to satisfy requirements and move on from. But the way Blue Yonder approaches them is much more operational.
For them, tabletops are rehearsals for coordination.
- Who makes decisions?
- How does escalation happen?
- Which external partners need to be involved?
- How do legal, communications, and engineering interact?
Those questions become incredibly important during live incidents. And if teams haven’t worked through them ahead of time, response can slow down immediately.
Sam described how teams begin to understand what it may actually feel like to be pulled into an incident under pressure. That experience matters because it helps build muscle memory – not just for technical teams, but for leadership and operational stakeholders as well.
The organizations that recover most effectively are rarely improvising everything in real time. They’ve practiced.
The Human Side of Resilience
What I appreciated most about this conversation was how grounded it was in the human reality of resilience work.
Cyber resilience often gets framed entirely through technology. But people often still determine outcomes.
- How leaders communicate.
- How teams collaborate.
- How organizations behave when information is incomplete.
Those factors help shape customer trust just as much as recovery timelines or technical controls do.
And perhaps the most important lesson from Erika and Sam is that trust isn’t earned during easy moments. It’s earned during uncertainty. During ambiguity. During the moments when organizations have to choose transparency over silence and consistency over perfection.
Watch the Full Episode
In this discussion, you’ll discover:
- How Blue Yonder operationalizes customer trust.
- Why consistency can matter more than immediate perfection.
- The role of communication during cyber incidents.
- How tabletop exercises strengthen resilience.
- Why supply chain environments can change the stakes for cyber recovery.
FAQs
Q: Why is trust so important in cyber resilience?
A: Because customers increasingly evaluate organizations based on how they respond during incidents, not simply whether incidents occur.
Q: What does “trust as an operating model” mean?
A: It means trust is continuously reinforced through operational behavior, communication consistency, and transparency – not just during crises.
Q: Why do the first 60 minutes of response matter so much?
A: Early communication can shape customer perception, help reduce uncertainty, and help establish credibility during rapidly evolving situations.
Q: How do tabletop exercises improve resilience?
A: They help teams rehearse coordination, escalation, and communication processes before real incidents occur.
Q: What is the biggest lesson from this discussion?
A: That resilience is typically deeply tied to operational trust, and organizations should build that trust before they need it most.
Q: How can organizations help improve customer trust during incidents?
A: By communicating consistently, prioritizing transparency, and building strong internal coordination long before a crisis begins.
Chris Mierzwa is Senior Director, Portfolio Marketing, at Commvault.
