Growing Community with the New Trust Platform

Customer trust is important for any business, but seems elusive for the modern digital business. When customer interactions live on a screen, rather than shared in a physical space, building trust based on shared values becomes more difficult and nuanced.

Assumptions about shared values may not be correct, especially when applied to data, privacy, and security. As Internet citizens we make assumptions every day about the trustworthiness of the online services with which we interact. At DigitalOcean we believe that our community and customers shouldn’t need to make assumptions about trust. We also believe in being accountable for our commitments, as it’s a core element of trust. Our community is bigger than us, and we’re committed to a trust-based relationship with our community.

This is why I am excited to announce our DigitalOcean Trust Platform, launched this week.

On the Trust Platform, our customers and community will find honest and real information about privacy and security at DigitalOcean – not just the standard third-party stamps of approval. Important materials such as our annual Transparency Report will be made available, and our Trust FAQ will attempt to answer as many questions from real customers as we can. From how we handle your data and your customers’ data, gritty details about our own security posture, and your responsibilities as a DO customer, this will be the gateway to everything security and privacy at DigitalOcean.

Nothing is more important to DigitalOcean than continually earning the trust of our community and customers. Will we be perfect? Nope, we are still humans after all. Writing software is tough and mistakes happen, even for brilliant engineers. We recognize, accept, and plan for the fact that code we write, or open-source code we use, won’t be flawless. Flaws may be introduced in the business logic layer, in hardware, or perhaps buried deep within a codebase. We will work relentlessly to mitigate the risk of these flaws to our customers and community. What can you expect from us? Transparency, for each of these and many more topics, and not just what choices we make, and challenges we face, but what we learn from those choices and how they impact you.

We look forward to hearing feedback about what else you and your customers need from our Trust Platform, because this is just the beginning. Expect more content on the DigitalOcean blog and on the Trust Platform in the coming weeks. Leave a comment with what else you find important or interesting to learn about from the DigitalOcean Security team.