DigiCert Formally Debuts Trust Solutions Partner Program

Digital security provider DigiCert on Tuesday launched the new Trust Solutions Partner Program. It mainly targets managed security service providers, MSPs and VARs with a security-centric practice.

Trust Solutions operates alongside the TLS Partner Program; it replaces what previously was known as the DigiCert Partner Program. As such, it comes with upgraded benefits, including higher discounts, guaranteed margins, MDFs, deal registration, protected renewals, and new training and certification.

Most of those facets are pretty standard throughout the channel. Guaranteed margins, however, are not common (they’re not unheard of; they’re just not ubiquitous). DigiCert added that component because it knew too many partners struggled.

DigiCert’s Cameron Nelson

“Time and again, they have to cut the margins they receive from vendors to win a deal,” Cameron Nelson, DigiCert’s Trust Solutions group director of strategic growth, told Channel Futures.

Not anymore.

“Where the partner needs additional discounting, we will guarantee a fair margin in those instances,” Nelson said.

In other words, partners no longer have to sacrifice their own margins.

“For us to win, they don’t have to lose.”

Of course, DigiCert and its partners may come up against situations where potential customers demand too much of a cut. The company is prepared.

“In those instances, we have to walk away,” Nelson said.

Even so, to see a vendor willing to reduce its own margins so its partners don’t have to take the hit stands out. The margins guarantee further reflects DigiCert’s philosophical approach to the channel. The company chose to enhance what it offers because “we see partners really as an extension of our own organization and we want to approach the market from our partners’ perspective,” Nelson said.

Most of the top-tier advantages are only available to gold and platinum partners because – as is standard in these situations – they invest more and agree to bigger revenue commitments. MDFs serve as the biggest example of those more exclusive perks. But, DigiCert will consider, and possibly proceed with, ideas from silver partners on a case-by-case basis.

‘We Want to Be Thoughtful’

DigiCert actually conducted a soft launch of the Trust Solutions Partner Program late last year. The company – which secures everything from factory and cloud environments to medical devices and vehicle IoT sensors – has spent the intervening months honing the program.

“We’ve seen pretty significant adoption from both our previous partner program into our new partner program as well as net-new partners coming in,” Nelson said.

“Dozens” of partners, he added, have joined from the United States, Europe, Asia Pacific, Japan, Australia and the Middle East.

With that in mind, DigiCert is accepting applications from partners throughout the globe. But it will be picky about whom it approves.

Per DigiCert, partners need to meet the following requirements for the Trust Solution Partner Program:

“We’re really focused on quality more than we’re focused on quantity,” Nelson said. “We want to bring trust to the market and that requires us to have partners that buy into delivering the trust.”

To that point, DigiCert is looking for MSSPs, VARs and other partners with a background in – and practice areas around – identity and access management, enterprise security, monitoring and detection response, and so on. Not by coincidence, those specialties fall under the auspices of DigiCert’s new DigiCert ONE public key infrastructure (PKI) platform. Therefore, Nelson said, “we are open to any partners to apply and would love to build out our network, but we want to be thoughtful about the partners we bring in.”

And now is the right time for DigiCert to debut the Trust Solutions Partner Program, Nelson said. The “massive transition” to remote work during COVID-19 has fueled a “trust deficit,” he said. So has the shift to a connected world, one where even cars rely on 5G-powered devices to operate. Imagine the disasters should someone hack these sensors.

“We can be the common denominator for security in our partners’ portfolios,” Nelson said.