By partnering with the industry leader, you benefit from DigiCert’s partner program, featuring the industry’s top talent and capabilities. We’re working to simplify certificate procurement & provisioning, allowing you to offer the best SSL/TLS and PKI solutions.

Welcome

This second issue of our DigiCert Partner News finds partners worldwide celebrating the change of seasons, and finds us acting upon all the buzz generated by the successful debut of our DigiCert Certified Partner Program at the CloudFest event last month. You’ll read about that later, but first, we wish to say “Thanks” for taking time to catch up with us.

DigiCert strives to maintain a strong industry reputation for being fast, reliable, and responsive. We’re known for our exceptional customer support, industry-leading OCSP response times, and award-winning PKI and IoT management platforms. But enough about us. What’s in it for you? Our goal is to help you leverage our strengths to drive revenue and increase margins. Learn more about DigiCert.

Announcements

At the CloudFest event at Europa Park in Rust, Germany, last month, we continued to rollout our new DigiCert Certified Partner Program. The program provides performance-appropriate access to sales and marketing resources aligned to a partner’s tier: standard benefits are available to Silver Tier Partners, enhanced benefits are available to Gold Tier Partners, and full-featured support and resources are available for Platinum Tier Partners.

We’ve reserved the topmost, exclusive tier—by invitation only—for Platinum Elite Partners: benefits for this level include the most enviable of support and resources available, concierge marketing services, and dedicated technical support. Find out more by downloading the Certified Partner Program guide.

Our Diamond-level sponsorship of the CloudFest event last month was a resounding success. We continued the rollout of the DigiCert Certified Partner Program, we showcased leading partners who were first to sign up for reselling our PKI/IoT offerings, and we held face-to-face meetings with some of our key partners.

For the details behind the excitement, check out our accompanying press release plus the press coverage links below. We look forward to seeing you next year at CloudFest 2019!

• ChannelBuzz – New PKI Certification, Absorption of Ex-Symantec Partners Highlight Revamped DigiCert Channel Program
• Channelnomics – DigiCert Revamps Partner Program Following Symantec Web Security Acquisition
• Channelnomics – Channelnomics’ Top Five Stories of the Week – 16 March 2018
• Channelnomics – Editor’s Voice: The Week’s Channel Chatter – 16 March 2018
• Channel Partners – DigiCert Enhances Partner Program after Symantec Website Security Buy
• IoT Innovator – DigiCert Unveils Enhancements to Its Certified Partner Program to Accelerate SSL, PKI and IoT Opportunities

SSL/TLS certificates issued from the Symantec infrastructure will require reissuance by Google Chrome deadlines to ensure continuity for your customers. Some certificates need attention immediately while some can wait. The first soft deadline was 15 March 2018 when the beta release of Google Chrome release 66 impacted certificates issued before 1 June 2016 and expiring on/after 15 March 2018.

To avoid risk or delays, we strongly advise you to reissue certificates within these dates—before the stable release of Chrome 66 goes live around 17 April 2018. Refer to our ongoing outreach, knowledge base articles, webinars, and more for details about which certificates will be impacted by this imminent deadline, or contact your account manager now.

In advance of the ensuing deadlines throughout the year, we will continue outreach to you to specify which certificates are affected and when they need to be reissued. We will replace all affected certificates at no cost to your customers. Since certificates issued from the trusted DigiCert root hierarchy are not impacted by these deadlines, you can continue to order and manage new certificates. Learn more.

Feel free to use our easy web-based tool to check whether any specific domain has a GeoTrust, RapidSSL, Symantec, or Thawte certificate but needs action related to Google Chrome distrust. This tool is publicly available and free to use, so partners can offer it to customers who want objective factualization of their certificate’s status. Visit it at https://www.websecurity.symantec.com/support/ssl-checker

Upcoming Events

DigiCert will be exhibiting at the annual RSA Conference at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, California, USA, from 16–20 April 2018. Registration is open, so use our exclusive offer code X8EDIGIC for a FREE EXPO pass or $150 off a Full Conference Pass. See you at our booth #233 in the South Exhibit Hall!

• On-Demand: New Web PKI Hierarchy here.
• Live: DigiCert Monthly Threat Briefing. 26 April 2018 at 9:00 AM MDT. Register here.
• On-Demand: Tips & Tools for Reissuing Your Symantec-Issued Certificates. View it here.
• On-Demand: Scaling Your Secured Projects: SSL/TLS Automation to the Rescue. View it here.
• Save the dates: Partner Roundtables 2018
  • Americas: Miami, USA 11–15 June 2018
  • Europe, Middle East & Africa: Reykjavik, Iceland 17–21 September 2018

Asia/Pacific: Osaka, Japan 12–16 November 2018

Tech Corner

For security and compliance best practices, we will update the Online Certificate Status Protocol (OCSP) and Certificate Revocation List (CRL) infrastructure for all certificates issued from our legacy hierarchies for the GeoTrust, RapidSSL, Symantec, and Thawte brands.

For certificates issued from our legacy hierarchies before 1 December 2017, domain hosts and website hosts must be able to access our OCSP and CRL servers. For more information, refer to these knowledge base articles as appropriate for your business:

• GeoTrust
• RapidSSL
• Symantec Complete Website Security and Managed PKI for SSL
• All other Symantec-branded certificates
• Thawte

For certificates issued on or after 1 December 2017, no action pertaining to this update is necessary. These certificates were issued from the DigiCert root CA and are unaffected by this update.

To modernize and streamline our code signing certificate offerings, we will update our code signing PKI hierarchy and begin integrating with DigiCert platforms. We intend to sign all new and reissue code signing certificates from the DigiCert hierarchy and infrastructure by mid-June 2018, regardless of the brand under which they’re sold. However, these changes will not impact existing code signing certificates nor the validity of signed files, whether timestamped or not.

These changes will apply to all code signing products listed below for Symantec and Thawte code signing products:

• Microsoft™ Authenticode™
• Microsoft™ Office and VBA
• Java™
• Adobe™ AIR™
• Mac® OS X desktops

For information on changes to the code signing PKI hierarchy, read our Website Security blog or see these links for more information.

• Symantec Complete Website Security and Managed PKI for SSL
• All other Symantec-branded certificates
• Thawte

Useful Links

• Help keep our partnership healthy with our Partner Best Practices and our Partner Guide to Certificate Validation & Management
• Our Partner Blog
• Platform release details can be found in our Product Activity Log
• Details on new roots and intermediate CAs for RapidSSL, Thawte, GeoTrust, and Symantec
• Contact SSL Partner Support
• Shareable tool to check individual domains for distrust