1 Why Trust Is the New Currency In an always-on, API-driven economy, data moves faster than contractual safeguards. According to VSI research, 58 % of customers switch providers after a single trust breach; 74 % of regulators now mandate continuous assurance over annual audits. 2 The Pyramid of Trust Explained VSI models trust as a five-tier pyramid: (A) Identity Integrity (verified humans & workloads), (B) Data Veracity (lineage, provenance, SBOMs), (C) Process Transparency (audit-ready workflows), (D) Predictive Governance (ML risk scoring), and (E) Ecosystem Reciprocity (cross-enterprise trust anchors). 3 Zero-Trust Controls at Each Tier * Identity: password-less FIDO2 + workload SPIFFE IDs. * Data: immutable ledgers & AICPA SOC mapping. * Process: Git
Ops plus OPA policy gates in CI/CD. * Predictive: Bayesian risk graphs that surface toxic entitlement combinations 24 minutes before breach. * Ecosystem: confidential-compute enclaves for shared ML. 4 KPIs to Watch Mean Privilege Score, Trust Heat Map, Policy Drift Index, Ecosystem SLA. Benchmarks show a 47 % reduction in incident MTTR when all metrics are instrumented. 5 Case Study A federal payments bureau climbed the pyramid in eight months–slashing false-positive fraud alerts 63 %, boosting citizen-service NPS 21 points, and achieving Fed
RAMP High ATO in record time. 6 Financial
Impact For a $5 B telco, each 1-point Trust Index increase correlates with $18 M annual EBITDA lift due to churn reduction and premium services uptake. 7 Cultural Enablers Trust charters in every scrum team, red-team/blue-team drills, and "trust nudges" integrated into employee workflows. 8 Road-Map 90-day discovery
- 180-day pilot
- 12-month enterprise rollout
- 24-month ecosystem federation. 9
Conclusion Trust can't be bolted on; it must be architected. VSI's Pyramid Framework turns zero-trust theory into measurable business value.
