IT VOICE – Looking back at 2024, the most significant developments in the digital trust landscape in India, particularly in terms of cybersecurity, digital certificates, and identity management
Anant Deshpande – 2024 has been an epoch of sorts for the cybersecurity industry. Updates leading to outages, Legislation led codification of Cybersecurity standards by many Governments across the world, AI coming of Age, just to name a few . And we still have a few days to go before the calendar turns ! India is digitally intertwined with the global order and naturally saw its fair share of some of these developments. There is a growing importance and realisation of the importance of Digital Trust and the potential it presents. Digital Certificates which are the atomic unit of Digital Trust and Identity have a big role to play in securing our digital way of life. We are witnessing rapid acceleration of the adoption of certificate based solutions across industries. Maintaining the fidelity of content, like documents, automation of code signing, certificate lifecycle management and securing of consumer devices are all interesting use cases we are delighted to have solved for our customers.
IT VOICE – In 2025, key trends foreseen to shape the future of digital trust in India
Anant Deshpande – 2025 promises to be as eventful and disruptive as previous years. One of the big trends taking shape is the interest around Quantum Safe Cryptography and thereby Post Quantum Computing (PQC) Cryptography. Interestingly, the National Quantum Mission has been instituted by the Honourable Prime Minister with the vision of making Bharat a leader in the Quantum field. AI will continue to disrupt and evolve and from a cyber perspective, the sophistication of AI based attacks will continue to scale. AI based EMail phishing attacks will increase manifold and organisations would well consider implementation of certificate based email signing like SMIME.
The ability to automate and scale software updates will assume increased importance especially in light of the recent outages. This would extend to IoT infrastructure as well wherein “Over the Air” (OTA) based updates will play an important role. One of the interesting developments we will witness is the request to provide CBOM’s ( Cryptographic Bill of Materials ) as a vital tool to catalogue cryptographic assets and their associated dependencies. Amidst all this , the drive to consolidate vendors, automate workflows , simpler management and integrations will be top priorities for organisations in India.
IT VOICE – With the growing importance of digital transformation in India, what steps are being taken by DigiCert to ensure organizations in the country to effectively manage and secure their digital identities
Anant Deshpande- At Digicert we recognise that establishing Digital Trust is a precursor to Digital Transformation. We have already introduced our world class solutions portfolio in the Indian Market. Having a robust PKI infrastructure, a key to digital infrastructure is now enabled by Certificate lifecycle management , to discover, manage, automate , retire and renew digital certificates. Likewise scanning , automation , consolidation and signing of code signing and wrapping all this with an SBOM ( Software Bill of Materials ) in traditional as well as new age software applications is invaluable for the Indian Software and Startup Industry.
Likewise securing IoT devices from Birth to Decommissioning is a key offering that is critical in securing not only critical infrastructure but also citizens’ personal infrastructure. Last but not the least, we have ensured the availability of NIST approved PQC standards across our Digicert One platform and also set up quantum labs which our customers can use to test drive their quantum use cases. A lot of the build of this platform is happening in our Engineering Centre in India where we continue to double down on Investments.
IT VOICE- Insights on how DigiCert’s partner program has evolved in India in the past year, and what plans are in place for expanding the program further in 2025
Anant Deshpande- As we evolve our offerings for the Indian Market, we have launched the Integrated Partner Program for our partners in India. The program aims to ensure and accelerate partner readiness. It incorporates all that a partner needs under one pane . So whether they need solution documents, pricing, enablement or marketing support , our partners have one single space to navigate. It would be worthwhile to mention that India is a long standing Partner Market for DigiCert and our partners have been instrumental in representing and growing Digicert in India. Partner Led growth is a key pillar of our India Strategy.
IT VOICE- As digital security becomes a major priority for Indian businesses, how will the role of certificates, encryption, and identity solutions evolve to maintain digital trust in the country? What are the main challenges to address moving forward?
Anant Deshpande- As mentioned earlier, Digital Certificates are the building block of Digital Trust. With rapid digitization , and exponential growth in devices and applications. The need to effectively manage certificates is becoming a strategic priority. If you add AI and Quantum to the mix, the need to manage these at volume and scale is even more pressing. There is a lot of debate happening in the CA/Browser Forum on shortening the public digital certificate lifespan .
Apple recently proposed reducing the maximum lifespan from 398 days to just 45 days! Similarly, Google has proposed a 90 day certificate validity period. Shorter validity can improve security by ensuring that encryption keys are rotated more frequently. Additionally A broadening regulatory ambit as well as increased need for disclosure will mean that organisations need to move towards automated tools and an integration based approach – which is a challenge as well as an opportunity to mitigate human error, reduce costs, and free up IT resources, enabling teams to focus on strategic security initiatives.
