What is a TrustOps Council and Why Does It Matter to Your Team?

Quick Answers

What is TrustOps? Gartner® defines TrustOps, or trust operations, as a holistic approach to enhancing organizational trustworthiness and transparency while mitigating risks from disinformation and harmful associations. It includes policies and practices to verify and certify content authenticity and detect and debunk false or misleading content.

What is a Trust Operations Council? A TrustOps Council is the cross-functional governance body responsible for establishing policies, responsibilities, education, technology, and response processes for an organization’s TrustOps program. 

Why does a Trust Council matter and who should participate? A Trust Council establishes clear ownership and a coordinated approach to disinformation risk across the enterprise. Gartner® recommends a cross-functional council of a maximum of eight to 10 participants to serving as the central governance body, including representation from risk/compliance, IT and cybersecurity, legal, marketing, sales and product development.

READ: GARTNER®: EVERY ENTERPRISE NEEDS A TRUST COUNCIL TO COMBAT THE DELUGE OF AI DISINFORMATION

When a deepfake impersonates your CEO or a false narrative about your company spreads online, who owns the response? Communications may face a reputational crisis, CISOs and security teams may react to the cyber threat, and legal teams may face potential liability. Without clear ownership, cross-functional teams can lose critical time deciding who should act.

In its March 2026 report, Every Enterprise Needs a Trust Council to Combat the Deluge of AI Disinformation, Gartner® recommends establishing a cross-functional Trust Council to close that gap. This group governs trust operations, or TrustOps, bringing together leaders across communications, cybersecurity, legal, risk, and other functions to set policies, assign responsibilities, and coordinate responses to disinformation. For your team, that means knowing who verifies a threat, who makes decisions, and when to escalate—before an incident puts those responsibilities to the test.

Department	Role in the Council
IT & Cybersecurity	CISOs and CIOs oversee technical identity management and detect threat vectors.
Marketing & PR	CMOs and communications leads handle brand containment and public-facing narratives.
Legal & Compliance	Evaluates regulatory exposures, handles copyright/deepfake legal issues, and crafts response boundaries.
Human Resources	Manages employee training, handles internal leaks, and builds internal cultural resilience.
Executive Leadership	Serves as the final escalation point for high-stakes business continuity decisions.

AI has made it easier to create manipulated media, impersonate executives with deepfakes, and amplify harmful narratives across the information ecosystem. At the same time, responsibility for managing disinformation risk often spans communications, cybersecurity, legal, risk, and other functions, which can blur ownership and decision-making. In our understanding, Gartner® argues that this governance gap is one reason disinformation issues can fall between teams. The Gartner® 2025 Readiness for World Without Truth Survey found that 72% of respondents identified misinformation, disinformation, and malinformation as very or relatively important issues to their executive committees. However, only 30% said it was a top five concern.

The financial stakes are rising too. Gartner® predicts that by 2028, enterprise spending on battling misinformation, disinformation, and malinformation will surpass $30 billion, cannibalizing 10% of marketing and cybersecurity budgets to combat a multifront threat. 

Gartner® also predicts that by 2027, 50% of enterprises will be investing in disinformation security products or services and TrustOps strategies, up from less than 5% in 2025. As those investments grow, governance becomes essential to turning TrustOps from a set of disconnected activities into an operational capability.

“Every enterprise needs to create a trust council.”

How does narrative intelligence support TrustOps?

Narrative intelligence helps teams monitor harmful narratives and understand the actors, networks, and behaviors driving their amplification. For a Trust Council, that gives communications, cybersecurity, risk, legal, and leadership teams shared intelligence to assess emerging activity and coordinate a response. Gartner® specifically includes identifying harmful narratives among the capabilities organizations need to address disinformation.

“Identify harmful narratives about their organization, industry, or executives quickly, and act swiftly and effectively to address them.”

– Gartner®, by Dave Aron, Andrew Frank, Apeksha Kaushik, Every Enterprise Needs a Trust Council to Combat the Deluge of AI Disinformation, March 2026

How can organizations start building a TrustOps Council?

“The first step CIOs should take is to ensure there is a trust council governance body in place to decide how the enterprise will handle the disinformation issue.”

Narrative intelligence can support that work by helping teams monitor harmful narratives, identify the actors and networks driving them, and coordinate response across functions. Blackbird.AI’s Constellation Narrative Intelligence Platform provides these capabilities.

READ: GARTNER: EVERY ENTERPRISE NEEDS A TRUST COUNCIL TO COMBAT THE DELUGE OF AI DISINFORMATION 

The Way Forward: Key Takeaways 

For organizations building a TrustOps program, we believe the Gartner® guidance points to three priorities:

• Establish clear cross-functional ownership through a Trust Council. Give a defined group responsibility for governing disinformation risk across the organization.
• Build repeatable TrustOps policies and response processes. Define how teams verify information, monitor harmful narratives, escalate incidents, and coordinate a response.
• Test and measure TrustOps preparedness. Use simulated disinformation incidents to evaluate response capabilities and measure effectiveness over time.

As AI-generated content and coordinated narrative attacks create risk across more parts of the enterprise, TrustOps provides a framework for turning fragmented responsibilities into a coordinated approach to protecting organizational trust.

Gartner®, Every Enterprise Needs a Trust Council to Combat the Deluge of AI Disinformation, Dave Aron, Andrew Frank, et al.,17 March 2026 

Gartner®, Tech FutureSight: Without Narrative Intelligence, AI Disinformation Attacks Will Win, Alfredo Ramirez IV, Apeksha Kaushik, et al., 1 August 2025 

Gartner®, Emerging Market Quadrant for Narrative Intelligence — Startup Vendors, Alfredo Ramirez IV, Apeksha Kaushik, et al., 24 September 2026

Gartner®, AI Vendor Race: Blackbird.AI Is the Company to Beat for Disinformation Narrative Intelligence, Apeksha Kaushik, Alfredo Ramirez IV, 24 July 2026

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