More Than an IT Issue: Digital Trust Is a Business Imperative

Imagine receiving an urgent call from a client saying they still have not received an important business quotation. Only later does the company discover that its official email has been classified as spam by an overseas corporate system. Even more troubling, a fraudulent website appears online with a domain name differing from the company’s official site by just one letter. Using generative AI, the fake site perfectly replicates the company’s brand visuals and writing style, quietly harvesting customers’ personal data.

In such a situation, many companies’ first reaction is to “ask the IT department to fix it immediately.” Yet what is truly at stake is often not the system itself, but the brand trust that has taken years to build. As the first point of contact between businesses and their customers and supply chains gradually shifts from physical channels to search engines, official websites, email, and even AI assistants, what companies need to manage is no longer just information security, but “digital trust.”

From Cybersecurity Protection to Digital Governance: Protecting Brand Trust Is the Real Priority

Jo-Fan Yu, CEO of the Taiwan Network Information Center (TWNIC), pointed out that the biggest question today is whether people still feel they can trust the information they encounter online. In her view, generative AI has dramatically lowered the barriers to creating fake websites, phishing emails, and false information. As a result, the challenge facing businesses has evolved from simply defending against cyber threats to continuously building and maintaining brand trust. For CEOs, “trust management” is no longer merely the responsibility of the IT department; it has become an important issue of corporate governance.

Many companies still believe that because they are small, they are unlikely to become targets of cyberattacks. Yu noted, however, that with the help of AI, attackers can now scan for vulnerabilities rapidly and at scale. Any organization with insufficient protection can become an entry point for a supply-chain attack. More importantly, the damage companies face is not limited to data breaches. Customers may begin to lose the ability to distinguish the genuine official website from fraudulent copies. Once the credibility of the official digital entry point is undermined, the brand reputation built over many years can also suffer.

“In the past, people tended to think of cybersecurity as firewalls and antivirus software—something for the IT department to handle. Today, it is equally a matter of corporate governance,” Yu said. Domain names have become one of a company’s most important digital assets and the first gateway through which brand trust is established. Only by incorporating digital trust into board-level governance can companies truly reduce operational risk and strengthen business resilience.

Building Verifiable Brand Trust on Country-Code Top-Level Domains

Once “trust” becomes part of a company’s competitiveness, the next question is: how can that trust be verified?

Yu believes that companies need more than additional cybersecurity tools; they need a trustworthy digital infrastructure. This is also at the heart of TWNIC’s long-term work in managing Taiwan’s country-code top-level domains and building a foundation for verifiable brand trust.

Today, many types of domain names are available for registration, including a wide range of new generic top-level domains (new gTLDs), as well as country-code top-level domains that represent individual countries and territories, such as .tw, .jp, and .us. Yu emphasized that for companies rooted in and serving a local market, a country-code top-level domain can be a strong choice for establishing local identity and building digital brand trust.

Through mechanisms such as DNSSEC (Domain Name System Security Extensions), phishing-reporting mechanisms, the Green Domain verification service, and Registry Lock, TWNIC helps enterprises take preventive measures to reduce the risks of website tampering, domain hijacking, and impersonation, thereby making their official digital entry points more trustworthy.

In addition, TWNIC has established information security and privacy protection management systems aligned with international standards. By continuously strengthening the resilience of Taiwan’s Internet infrastructure, TWNIC helps businesses connect with global supply chains and meet international regulatory requirements, turning digital trust into an important foundation for long-term and sustainable business operations.

Trust in Every Click: Turning Trust into Long-Term Business Competitiveness

“Trust must be invested in before a crisis happens, rather than repaired only after something goes wrong,” Yu said.

Brand awareness can be built quickly through marketing, but genuine market trust takes time to accumulate. As digital interactions become the primary way businesses communicate with the market, establishing trustworthy official entry points, sound domain management, and effective digital governance mechanisms is no longer merely a cybersecurity issue. It has become part of a company’s overall competitiveness.

For TWNIC, Trust in Every Click is more than a technical vision. It reflects a broader goal of helping enterprises turn “trust” into a governance capability that can be verified, managed, and strengthened over time.

When every click can be trusted, businesses are better positioned to build lasting brand value and continue earning the trust of customers and the market in the age of AI.