Keyfactor, which secures digital identities, on Thursday rolled out its Keyfactor Partner Network, its new global partner program.

This is Keyfactor’s first partner program that has extended to solution providers (resellers, consultants and referral partners) and systems integrators. Its previous partner model was built on technology and alliance partners, including ISVs and other product integrations.

The company provides a public key infrastructure (PKI) as-a-service platform for certificate lifecycle automation and IoT device security.

BJ Ferguson, Keyfactor’s head of global channel sales and operations, tells us any selling his company did through partners was “purely opportunistic” and at the request of the customer when it came time to procure.

Keyfactor’s BJ Ferguson

“We’ve never really had a foundation for a formal program including simple partnership agreements, robust partner enablement (sales/technical), and a proper support system for our partners,” he said. “Keyfactor had primarily been a direct sales organization up to this point. The PKI and certificate life-cycle management market is a growing need for enterprises. We needed a way to scale our sales force and enter different markets throughout the world where our solutions are needed. Partners are a perfect way to do that in a quick and cost-effective manner.”

The program is a flat system with no tiering, offering a “very simple” entry point to begin offering Keyfactor products to their customers, Ferguson said.

“We have a simple agreement, an enablement program to get them up to speed quickly in both sales and technical aspects of what we do, and a support system behind our partners of every facet of our organization to make them successful,” he said. “The need for PKI and digital certificate management within organizations is growing exponentially. It seems that organizations (some fairly large) are getting into the news regularly with some sort of certificate related outage or breach, sometimes costing millions in repairs as well as brand reputation degradation. Enterprises need to scale and do so quickly to compete in today’s world. They need a certificate management solution that offers the same type of scale and speed to make them successful in their businesses as well. Keyfactor does that.”

“Now more than ever, enterprises need to assess their critical security infrastructures that manage and protect assets and customer information, especially as the industry prepares for the threat of quantum computing,” said Mark Cooper, president and founder of PKI Solutions, a Keyfactor partner. “The ability to quickly and easily partner with industry leaders, such as Keyfactor, enables us to quickly bring solutions to our customers. PKI Solutions is pleased to be part of the Keyfactor Partner Network where there is great synergy around securely managed public key infrastructures.”