Companies need to treat digital trust as a strategic imperative for their IT departments

Digital trust is a necessary component of digital transformation. It enables companies to transfer critical processes online and create new forms of inter-organization connection, while also being a critical for a connected future. Sarabjeet Khurana, Country Manager, India & SAARC – DigiCert shares why it is becoming important for businesses to build digital trust with its customers and stakeholders and how does DigiCert as a provider of digital trust helps customers -

How easy or difficult is it for any business today to build digital trust with its customers and stakeholders? What are the factors that determine its success?

Gaining customers’ trust—not just in a business’ products and services, but in its core purpose and principles—is fundamental to an enterprise’s success. With the advent of digital technology, businesses have been asking customers to trust them in new and deeper ways, from asking for their personal information to tracking their online behavior through digital breadcrumbs.

Companies need to treat digital trust as a strategic imperative for their IT departments because it can be challenging for customers to achieve. Scalable trust is especially hard for companies to achieve alone, since it requires industry compliance, robust infrastructure, as well as a unique skill set and understanding of cryptography.

Trust in digital form is an integral part of the security and risk function, protecting the company from cybersecurity threats. It is a necessary component of digital transformation, enabling companies to transfer critical processes online and create new forms of inter-organization connection. And it is essential to our connected future. Companies that are strategically investing in digital trust are positioning themselves now as stewards of a secure, connected world.

DigiCert has established itself as the catalyst for its partners and customers digital trust initiatives: shaping industry standards, achieving excellence in global compliance and operations, providing certificate lifecycle management for public and private trust, and extending trust into supply chains and connected ecosystems.

How DigiCert as a provider of digital trust helps its customers?

DigiCert is the world's leading provider of digital trust, enabling individuals and businesses to engage online with the confidence that their footprint in the digital world is secure. DigiCert provides the fabric for digital trust so its partners and their customers can succeed, with efficiency. With our global experts on digital trust, our robust compliance and operations infrastructure, and our cloud platform, organizations can manage trust across their many different connected systems and digital transformation initiatives, simplifying the process.

DigiCert ONE, the platform for digital trust, provides organizations with centralized visibility and control over a broad range of public and private trust needs, securing websites, enterprise access and communication, software, identity, content and devices. DigiCert pairs its award-winning software with its industry leadership in standards, support and operations, and is the digital trust provider of choice for leading companies around the world.

Could you chart DigiCert's journey in the Indian market? How has it been going so far?

We have the honour of being the leading digital trust provider in India; being very well positioned for continued success, working with our partners in the country. We understand the diverse needs and requirements of the Indian market which is why we have proactively focused on spreading awareness about the importance of digital trust by rolling out customer events and workshops. We on a regular basis capture customer’s feedback and inputs on their experiences and expectations from DigiCert ,which are then passed on to our R&D and Product teams for them to churn out products and services aligned to our customers’ needs and expectations. We have successfully leveraged complementing technologies & services in order to create better value for our customers and will continue to do so in future.

In collaboration with our partners and other stakeholders, we are planning to invest in making our customers and prospects increasingly aware of the security hygiene and importance of embracing best-in-class technologies and solutions, to prepare and win against increasing cyber threats.

What is your business plan with respect to growing your customer base?

The cybersecurity challenges that accompanied the pandemic continue to persist, as hybrid remote workspaces have become a way of life. And through it all, the threat landscape continues to evolve, as innovations in cloud computing and other areas open up new threats — some in unexpected areas. At DigiCert, we are continuing to ensure innovations and tactical approaches to bring out products and solutions that work best for our partners in India. Our vision is to continue to lead and expand the digital trust market, to provide the building blocks as well as continued innovation to help customers and partners always stay ahead of evolving cyber security threats. We are excited about our growth opportunities, alongside the continued emergence of India as an economic power in the world.

Very recently, we have introduced Verified Mark Certificates (VMCs), which allows Indian companies with a registered trademark and DMARC enforcement to display their logo in Gmail application inboxes. VMCs, together with DMARC, help increase brand impressions and counter spoofing and attacks on email integrity. In addition, we recently acquired Mocana, enabling DigiCert to provide the industry’s most comprehensive end-to-end security platform for connected devices.

We will continue to offer the best solutions to allow our customers to succeed with their digital trust initiatives.

How is the digital security landscape in the country? How are customers across the industry - large enterprises, mid-level companies, and small businesses building their data security measures, and are they adequate?

India is one of the fastest-growing markets for digital technologies, fueling the government's push towards actualising its Digital India mission. Whether creating broadband highways or rolling out services such as DigiLocker and e-governance schemes like the Jan Dhan Yojana, the government has pushed for as much digital adoption as possible over the past five years.

India is home to 1.15 billion phones and more than 700 million internet users and makes it a large pool of digitally vulnerable users. The pandemic has further accelerated the adoption of online channels for consumers, companies and industries. Consequently, this vast and rapid expansion of digital assets have increased the surface area for cyber-attacks by malicious actors and adversaries. The recent spate of attacks should alert us to the true possibility of potentially dangerous scenarios in the future.

Keeping in mind the growing need to protect infrastructure, including securing data and information, running risk analysis and mitigation, architecting cloud-based security and finally achieving compliance, DigiCert has put in place the components to help companies across India succeed with this critical initiative with an aim to strengthen digital trust across the world.