SAN FRANCISCO, Aug. 11, 2026 /PRNewswire/ —

• The AI Trust and Security Consortium (AITSC) launches today, an independent, peer-governed standards initiative for enterprise AI. Founding members include Ulf Mattsson, founder of Protegrity; Lori Higham, President of Secure Cloud Provider Inc; and Maggie Amato, a CISO/BISO leader formerly of Salesforce and Dell.
• The cohort is capped at 50 security and technology leaders, who co-author reference architectures, control frameworks, and board-ready governance models. Members also share real incidents and vendor performance under strict confidentiality.
• CISOs, CIOs, CTOs, Chief Privacy Officers, and heads of GRC or security architecture accountable for AI governance can apply here. Reviewed on a rolling basis.

The AI Trust and Security Consortium (AITSC) opens applications today for its founding cohort of 50 enterprise security and technology leaders to define how AI gets deployed, governed, and trusted inside the world’s largest organizations.

“I said yes in about ten seconds,” said Maggie Amato, CISO/BISO Leader, Ex-Salesforce, Dell. “I am building AI governance in real time, with real deadlines, and the honest truth is that everyone is improvising. What I want is not another framework document. I want to know what actually broke at a company my size, what caught it, and what it cost. That kind of candor only happens in a small room with people who trust each other, and that is exactly what this consortium is set up to be.”

This is an independent, practitioner-led standards initiative. It brings together cross-industry security and IT leaders to build the AI guardrails that regulators are now demanding and no existing framework supplies.

The rules for AI in the enterprise are being written right now. The only real question is who writes them: the people who have to defend these systems, or everyone else.

This consortium exists to make sure it’s the former.

“Security leaders are being asked to underwrite the biggest technology bet of their careers with tools and frameworks that predate the technology,” said Balaji Ganesan, CEO, Trust3 AI. “Nobody solves that alone. This independent consortium was built to ensure the people carrying the risk are the ones setting the standard.”

The Problem Nobody Has Solved Yet

Every enterprise CISO and CIO is living the same contradiction: the board wants AI everywhere by next quarter; engineering already shipped it; legal wants a framework that doesn’t exist; and regulators are drafting rules that will land before anyone is ready.

Yet – there is no real standardized playbook. McKinsey’s 2026 AI Trust Maturity Survey found only about one-third of organizations reporting mature AI governance. 48% of organizations now name security concerns the top barrier to AI adoption, up from 17% in 2024, according to the Linux Foundation.

Agents now hold credentials and take actions. Models leak data in ways no DLP tool was built to catch. Third party AI shows up inside your stack without a procurement ticket. Prompt injection turns a helpful assistant into an insider threat. The frameworks security leaders inherited were written for software that didn’t reason, didn’t act, and didn’t change its own behavior between Tuesday and Thursday.

Organizations cannot afford to wait for a standards body or marketing white paper to catch up. They must build the answers alongside other practitioners facing the same day-to-day challenges.

Benefits of Becoming a AITSC Member

This peer-to-peer working group empowers members with:

1. Category-shaping standards they help write. AITSC publishes reference architectures, control frameworks, and board-ready governance models under members’ collective authorship.
2. Confidential intelligence-sharing. Real incidents, real near-misses, real vendor performance, shared under a strict confidentiality agreement. What broke, what caught it, what it cost.
3. Accelerated discovery. Fifty vetted peers who have already solved what you’re staring at. One conversation saves a quarter of discovery work. Members set working group priorities, so your problems get solved first.
4. Market standing. Founding members carry permanent recognition, publish under the consortium banner, and speak on AITSC panels to define AI security governance rather than reacting to it.

“I have spent my career watching data protection standards get written after the damage, not before it,” said Ulf Mattsson, Founder of Protegrity. “Tokenization, encryption, privacy regulation: in every case the practitioners understood the problem years before the frameworks caught up. AI is the same story moving faster. I joined this consortium because the people accountable for defending these systems should be the ones writing the controls, and because that work is far better done in a room of peers than alone.”

Who We’re Looking For

The consortium is actively seeking candidates who are:

• CISOs, CIOs, CTOs, Chief Privacy Officers, or heads of GRC and security architecture
• Accountable for AI governance, AI risk, or AI enablement at real scale
• Operating in regulated or high-stakes environments, including financial services, healthcare, pharma, energy, public sector, technology, and retail
• Committed to transparent peer-to-peer collaboration and proactively building the standard, rather than waiting for it

Founding members receive lifetime founding status, permanent recognition in all consortium publications, and a direct hand in setting the consortium’s charter and agenda. Later cohorts join a consortium that founding members designed.

Interested leaders can apply at: https://trust3ai.typeform.com/to/Lm9bliFZ

Applications are reviewed on a rolling basis.

“Our board isn’t asking whether we should embrace AI; they’re asking how we govern it responsibly while creating measurable business value. Security, compliance, and governance cannot be afterthoughts or obstacles to innovation; they must provide the confidence to move faster. That’s why I’m participating in this consortium: to help establish practical, peer-validated approaches that enable organizations to harness AI, govern data effectively, and make risk-informed decisions with confidence.” Lori Higham, President of Secure Cloud Provider Inc

About Trust3 AI

Trust3 AI is the security control plane for enterprise AI and agents. Founded by Balaji Ganesan, Don Bosco Durai, and Neeraj Sabharwal, the company delivers AI-powered Agent Security through its One Control Plane architecture, powered by a Unified Trust Layer built on AI-native metadata and context. The platform enables enterprises to discover every agent, observe every decision, and secure every action across any framework, cloud, and data source. Trust3 AI is a member of the NVIDIA Inception program and the Snowflake Startup Accelerator. Learn more at trust3.ai or request a demo at trust3.ai/demo.

Media Contact 

Angela Chen

angela@trust3.ai

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SOURCE Trust3 AI