2013 North American SSL Certificate Market Share Leadership Award

Transcription

1 2013 North American SSL Certificate Market Share Leadership Award 2013

2 Market Share Leadership Award SSL Certificate North America, 2013 Frost & Sullivan s Global Research Platform Frost & Sullivan is in its 50th year in business with a global research organization of 1,800 analysts and consultants who monitor more than 300 industries and 250,000 companies. The company s research philosophy originates with the CEO s 360-Degree Perspective, which serves as the foundation of its TEAM Research methodology. This unique approach enables us to determine how best-in-class companies worldwide manage growth, innovation and leadership. Based on the findings of this Best Practices research, Frost & Sullivan is proud to present the 2013 North American Market Share Leadership Award in the SSL Certificate market to Symantec. Significance of the Market Share Leadership Award Key Industry Challenges Addressed by Increased Market Share In what many have called The Year of the Breach, network security and trust service vendors were targets of multiple waves of attacks in 2011 that resulted in the breach of several well-recognized security vendors. While the methods attackers used to breach these vendors varied, they all prompted the same question from customers: Can we still trust your product? In the SSL certificate market in particular, most certificate authorities that were breached were able to move swiftly, however, a Dutch certificate authority that was the primary certificate authority for the Dutch government was unable to combat the severity of its attack. This ultimately resulted in the company ceasing operations. The escalating breaches of 2011 forced certificate authorities to look at their infrastructure and move to immediately resolve any potential issues. In addition, the Certificate Authority/Browser forum created baseline requirements that describe the best practices of issuing digital certificates. SSL certificates are grouped into three categories of validation. Depending on the target market, certificate authorities offer either high-assurance (organization and extended validated) certificates, or all three certificates (domain, organization, and extended validated). High-assurance certificate authorities offer their certificates at a higher premium than other certificate authorities due to several factors, including additional malware scanning and certificate discovery. These certificate authorities generally focus on small, midsize and large enterprise customers. Most certificate authorities that offer all certificates at a discounted rate target small-medium businesses and focus on the message that all certificates are created equal. This has caused confusion among customers as key differentiations between certificate authorities, for example, the infrastructure to secure and manage SSL certificates and the process of validation, are often not well understood Frost & Sullivan 1 We Accelerate Growth

3 All certificate authorities face the challenge of a lack of customer education around the benefits of high-assurance certificates. While there is general agreement that domain validated certificates play an important role, many customers still do not fully understand the benefits of extended validation certificates. The high price tag of extended validated certificates continues to slow adoption. Customers have shown a preference towards organization validation certificates, as these certificates are less expensive than extended validated certificates. However, organization validation certificates do require more validation than domain validated certificates. Certificate authorities that invest in educating their target markets will gain recognition and market share in the SSL certificate market. Impact of Market Share Leadership Award on Key Stakeholders The Market Share Leadership Award is a prestigious recognition of Symantec s accomplishments in the SSL certificate market. An unbiased, third-party recognition can provide a profound impact in enhancing the brand value and accelerating Symantec s growth. As captured in Chart 1 below, by researching, ranking, and recognizing those who deliver excellence and best practices in their respective endeavors, Frost & Sullivan hopes to inspire, influence, and impact three specific constituencies: Investors Investors and shareholders always welcome unbiased and impartial third-party recognition. Similarly, prospective investors and shareholders are drawn to companies with a well-established reputation for excellence. Unbiased validation is the best and most credible way to showcase an organization worthy of investment. Customers Third-party industry recognition has been proven to be the most effective way to assure customers that they are partnering with an organization that is leading in its field. Employees This Award represents the creativity and dedication of Symantec s executive team and employees. Such public recognition can boost morale and inspire your team to continue its best-in-class pursuit of a strong competitive position for Symantec Frost & Sullivan 2 We Accelerate Growth

4 Chart 1: Best Practices Leverage for Growth Acceleration Best Practice Award Analysis for Symantec The Frost & Sullivan Award for Market Share Leadership is presented to the company that has demonstrated excellence in capturing the highest market share within its industry. The Award recognizes the company's leadership position within the industry in terms of revenues or units, as specified. Symantec s Performance in the SSL certificate market In Frost & Sullivan s 2012 research service titled Analysis of the Global SSL Certificate Market, Symantec held the number one position in market share for both certificate sales and certificates issued, with 76.4% and 41.9% respectively. Percent of Sales Total SSL Certificate Market: (Global), 2011 Percent of Certificates Issued Total SSL Certificate Market (Global), 2011 Symantec 76.4% Others 23.6% Symantec 41.9% Others 58.1% 2012 Frost & Sullivan 3 We Accelerate Growth

5 Key Performance Drivers for Symantec Factor 1: Brand Awareness In 2012, Symantec officially completed the transition of its main SSL certificate business from VeriSign to the Symantec brand. Built upon VeriSign s highly reputable and trusted brand, Symantec has continued to lead the SSL certificate market in both certificate sales and certificates issued. The new Symantec checkmark provides end-users with ease of recognition and ease of mind that a Web site with a Symantec certificate is fully protected with high level of security and trust measures. It is important to note that Symantec slowly merged its and VeriSign s brand in order to minimize customer confusion. A slow transition enabled customers to become acquainted with the new brand and messaging around Symantec s trust services. Now, the Symantec checkmark is recognized for more than just the digital certificate business it now represents the whole company. Factor 2: Breadth of Solutions Working With SSL Certificates Now that VeriSign s brand has been transformed to represent Symantec, the company is leveraging its technology to work with its SSL certificate business. For example, several certificate authorities offer malware and vulnerability scanning on client Web sites that implement their certificates. Symantec offers malware scanning and vulnerability assessment and the capability to combine these offerings with the added benefit of displaying on clients side Norton Secured Seal, the most recognized and trusted seal by consumers. To end-users, the seal confirms that the Web site they will be visiting is authenticated and secure. In addition, Symantec offers clients Symantec Certificate Intelligence Center (CIC). This solution provides customers the ability to scan their environment on-demand and perform regular monitoring to create a detailed, up-to-date inventory of SSL certificates regardless of the issuing certificate authority. This prevents organizations from becoming victims of site outages due to expired certificates. Another common challenge that Symantec s solutions address is the threat of malicious advertising, also known as malvertising. Malvertising occurs when advertisements on legitimate Web sites are compromised with malware that could then be propagated to a large population of website users. Symantec AdVantage scans for malvertising and provides forensic tools to mitigate risks from future malvertisement incidents. This offering enables customers to host legitimate advertising on their Web sites and help protect their brand reputation and maintain business continuity Frost & Sullivan 4 We Accelerate Growth

6 Factor 3: Reinforcement of Trust Symantec invests in a military-grade infrastructure to protect the cryptographic keys that are entrusted for its safekeeping. Symantec s military-grade infrastructure has specifically designed hardened facilities to defend against attacks, hardware-based cryptographic signature systems, and thorough network security and anti-malware defense. Symantec also invests in leading edge technology and regular system upgrades to ensure a 100% uptime since 2004 on its Symantec SSL cloud platform and maintain the performance of a growing customer base. With regards to the authentication process, Symantec performs a stringent vetting process to identify ownership of the websites. Factor 4: Target Market Segmentation Under the VeriSign brand, Symantec acquired GeoTrust and Thawte certificate authorities. While the VeriSign business focused on the higherend of the market, the other two brands targeted small-to-medium enterprises. The GeoTrust and Thawte brands serve different markets, and therefore continue to operate separately from Symantec s product suite, allowing them to offer SSL solutions separate from the Symantec brand. The strong reputation of these two brands continues to attract and retain customers, contributing to Symantec s overall market share leadership. Conclusion Frost & Sullivan is proud to name Symantec as the recipient of the 2013 SSL certificate market share leadership award. In a market that is highly commoditized and competitive, the company has shown continued innovation, which has led to its number one positioning in market share for both certificate sales and certificates issued. The CEO360-Degree Perspective TM - Visionary Platform for Growth Strategies The CEO 360-Degree Perspective model provides a clear illustration of the complex business universe in which CEOs and their management teams live today. It represents the foundation of Frost & Sullivan's global research organization and provides the basis on which companies can gain a visionary and strategic understanding of the market. The CEO 360-Degree Perspective is also a must-have requirement for the identification and analysis of best-practice performance by industry leaders. The CEO 360-Degree Perspective model enables our clients to gain a comprehensive, action-oriented understanding of market evolution and its implications for their companies growth strategies. As illustrated in Chart 2 below, the following six-step process outlines how our researchers and consultants embed the CEO 360-Degree Perspective into their analyses and recommendations Frost & Sullivan 5 We Accelerate Growth

7 Chart2: The CEO's 360-Degree Perspective Model 2012 Frost & Sullivan 6 We Accelerate Growth

8 Critical Importance of TEAM Research Frost & Sullivan s TEAM Research methodology represents the analytical rigor of our research process. It offers a 360-degree view of industry challenges, trends, and issues by integrating all seven of Frost & Sullivan's research methodologies. Our experience has shown over the years that companies too often make important growth decisions based on a narrow understanding of their environment, leading to errors of both omission and commission. Frost & Sullivan contends that successful growth strategies are founded on a thorough understanding of market, technical, economic, financial, customer, best practices, and demographic analyses. In that vein, the letters T, E, A and M reflect our core technical, economic, applied (financial and best practices) and market analyses. The integration of these research disciplines into the TEAM Research methodology providesan evaluation platform for benchmarking industry players and for creating high-potential growth strategies for our clients. Chart 3: Benchmarking Performance with TEAM Research About Frost & Sullivan Frost & Sullivan, the Growth Partnership Company, enables clients to accelerate growth and achieve best-in-class positions in growth, innovation and leadership. The company's Growth Partnership Service provides the CEO and the CEO's Growth Team with disciplined research and best-practice models to drive the generation, evaluation and implementation of powerful growth strategies. Frost & Sullivan leverages 50 years of experience in partnering with Global 1000 companies, emerging businesses and the investment community from more than 40 offices on six continents. To join our Growth Partnership, please visit Frost & Sullivan 7 We Accelerate Growth