Data security is the biggest concern in today's digital world. Organizations are emphasizing on creating a safe and secure digital experience for people visiting their website. Organizations take every possible initiative to safeguard their digital assets in a scenario like today where cases of cybercrimes have increased a lot, especially in India. To handle such a challenge, DigiCert, a TLS/SSL certificates provider helps organizations encrypt and authenticate their web applications, networks, and endpoints. In conversation with Rajeev Ranjan, Editor, Digital Terminal, Mr. Sarabjit Khurana, Country Manager (SE Asia / India & SAARC), DigiCert talked about their offerings, cybersecurity scenario, and DigiCert's expansion plans for the Indian market. Read below the conversation:
Rajeev: Please brief about DigiCert’s services and offerings. How do you help enterprises to protect digital assets?
Sarabjit: As the world’s largest provider of TLS/SSL certificates and other PKI solutions, DigiCert provides highly scalable and automated platforms that enable organizations to encrypt and authenticate all of their web applications, networks and endpoints. The most common form of this is the technology behind the padlock that web users find next to the URL on popular sites such as Facebook and Twitter.
DigiCert’s modern DigiCert ONE® PKI platform, including CertCentral and other workflow managers, enable fully automated certificate deployments in addition to integration with popular cloud and IoT platforms, and organizational systems. DigiCert provides software to help companies deploy certificates without manual IT involvement to mobile and PC endpoints using auto enrollment. The platform also provides centralized escrow and recovery capabilities.
With DigiCert ONE, in addition to securing websites, businesses can secure email, documents, code, users, and devices – while also enabling remote access through VPN and authentication of devices connected to Wi-Fi. Furthermore, the service supports multiple use cases such as document signing, IoT device authentication, smart card login and SSL inspection.
Rajeev: What all initiatives have you taken in recent times to confront evolving security challenges?
Sarabjit: DigiCert has taken several steps to innovate and help customers stay ahead of evolving threats. First and foremost, we have invested heavily in the past two years to modernize our PKI infrastructure, including hardware, software and data centers. This investment has improved response times for customers, sped up validation of their certificate requests and enabled agile, automated and highly scalable certificate deployments. We are almost complete with upgrading all customers and partners to our modern platforms to more simple, automated and customized digital certificate management.
DigiCert remains on the forefront of innovation, with our industry’s only dedicated R&D team. Their work includes leading the industry in addressing the real and coming threat of commercially viable quantum computing, which many predict will break today’s commonly used cryptography. DigiCert is the first in its industry to create a post-quantum cryptography (PQC) toolkit that allows companies to create "hybrid" certificates for testing in their systems. Hybrid certificates align traditional (RSA, ECC) algorithms with quantum-safe algorithms in one certificate. DigiCert has already worked on proofs-of-concept (POCs) on PQC with companies such as Microsoft, ISARA, Utimatco and Gemalto. DigiCert also provides documentation about using PQC, industry guides, and research of industry attitudes toward preparing for the threats of quantum computing in its PQC toolkit.
Our innovation is helping customers deploy 5G, COVID testing and much more effectively and securely. DigiCert is the leading choice for utilizing PKI to secure the IoT, email, employee user authentication, signing documents and other files, and more.
Rajeev: Please brief about the recently launched multi-year plan for TLS certificates. What sort of advantages customers will get through this multi-year plan?
Sarabjit: This year, browsers moved to mandatory one-year certificate life-times starting 1 September 2020. In response, DigiCert released a multi-year plan to help customers and partners embrace the benefits of shorter certificate lifetimes and simplify certificate management. In previous years, a publicly trusted TLS certificate would last anywhere from 2 to 5 years, and so these changes may lead to more management work for IT managers. This new type of multi-year coverage is a time-efficient and cost-effective way to help your customers improve their security by further reducing certificate outages and the hassle of managing shorter certificate lifecycles.
Our multi-year plan enables our customers and partners to issue flexible certificate lifetimes as short as hours via our APIs. DigiCert offers two-, three-, four-, five-, and six-year Multi-year Plan for TLS certificates, allowing customers to avoid the hassles of corporate procurement processes each year and enjoy discounts with each year of coverage that they select. Using CertCentral, customers can set automated renewals for each year of their service.
Rajeev: As the need for a robust digital security infrastructure has increased throughout the years so how do you see the growth of this market by 2021?
Sarabjit: Our growth prospects are strong for 2021. Several factors contribute to this. On the web, companies must use a TLS certificate, or they risk their customers receiving “not secure” warnings in popular web browsers such as Chrome or Firefox. Additionally, the global pandemic has led to a huge surge in companies needing to support a remote workforce. To do so securely, companies need authentication of users and devices accessing their network, and they require encryption of data traveling to and from the network. This requires a substantial number of digital certificates, and this can place a major workload on IT teams if they do not use automation.
DigiCert ONE and CertCentral automate certificate lifecycle management, helping customers keep up with all these demands. DigiCert provides a highly scalable technology to keep uptime for customers on their digital networks. Also, digital signing of files, documents, devices is growing rapidly and DigiCert has industry-leading solutions to help customers achieve these goals.
We are also supporting a Gmail pilot to add verified logos, with digital certificates, to email. We are pushing forward with quantum-safe cryptography. DigiCert is securing billions of IoT devices. We are providing solutions for securing 5G networks. With these trends growing at strong rates, our growth prospects are strong. DigiCert provides the global technology strength and local expertise, through our India partners and local, regional teams to support customers in their growth. This includes our industry-leading customer support. We are excited about our growth opportunities for 2021.
Rajeev: Where is DigiCert positioned in the Indian market? What are your expansion strategies?
Sarabjit: DigiCert is the leading provider of high-assurance digital certificates in India, building upon many years of serving our customers and partners in India, as far back as Verisign when it first introduced the checkmark icon. In India, DigiCert secures 4 of the top 10 telecom companies, 6 of the top 10 Information Technology companies, 7 of the top 10 banks and 5 of the top 10 large business houses. DigiCert has local staff in India to support our India-based and global business, including an office located in Bangalore with more than 90 employees.
DigiCert launched the DigiCert Partner Program in 2018 where we work with JNR Management and Adweb Technologies as our top tier, Platinum Elite partners. In addition, India’s leading verticals including banking, financial services, insurance, telecom, manufacturing, e-commerce and healthcare choose DigiCert for their security needs.
