CyberCert eyes global expansion with Pax8 partnership

Ryan Ettridge speaks to CRN Australia about how they will take over the world through the company’s cybersecurity certification.

SMB cybersecurity certification body CyberCert is eyeing a global expansion as more small businesses understand the need to have a cybersecurity plan in place.

CyberCert is the certification body for SMB1001, the only international cyber standard specifically for SMBs.

The global launch of CyberCert will be hosted by cloud marketplace Pax8. Ryan Ettridge, co-founder at CyberCert told CRN Australia that it will be one of the only cyber certifications on that marketplace.

“CyberCert is the only certification in that marketplace, because it's the only one in the world,” he said.

“You have the UK cyber essentials and Singapore cyber essentials, which are government mandated certifications for small businesses, any suppliers the government have to do that.”

He added, “That's very effective because the government's backing it and mandating it, making it a license to operate. But for every other part of the world, there isn't one.”

Ettridge said CyberCert doesn't just help the SMB, but the partners too.

“In that sense, CyberCert is literally the program of work for managed service providers to follow and make money out of it,” he explained.

In terms of global expansion, CyberCert has Australia, US, UK, Canada, and New Zealand active now.

“The idea is to make certification available to any SMB powered by MSPs worldwide. We just started with the countries that have the most demand at the moment, but there's no actual technical limitation for us to certify any country in any part of the world,” he said.

“The target in the next 12 months is 100,000 small businesses certified, or at least certifying, and we're on track to be able to achieve that.”

He noted the US brings additional opportunities to the company.

“The US, however, has a huge insurance play, so we are partnering with some of the big technology marketplaces there, including Pax8, to be able to drive this through the US and Canada with ease,” he said.

“The idea is to expand and assist 30 million SMBs in the US that are not regulated, that this will absolutely benefit, if for no other reason than to simplify the insurance application renewal process, that's the simplicity of it.”

Ettridge explained why he created CyberCert.

“What CyberCert has created for small businesses, is to take the thinking away from them so they can focus on what they do best,” he said.

“Shift the responsibility to know how to do that into the network of managed service providers, partners, technology vendors and insurers and leaders that are ready to serve the small businesses.”

Small business owners, want to know that cybersecurity is being done, but not how to do it, so a standard is required, Ettridge explained.

“That's SMB 1001 that's the standard, CyberCert is the certification against that standard,” he said.

“We have 300 partners signed up already, one to 10 new partners signing up every day because it's free to join CyberCert.”

Working with Pax8

CyberCert was accelerated by the team at Pax8 to go live for a certification like this. He added that there was a waitlist of 1,000 tech partners to get into the Pax8 marketplace.

“[There was] six to seven months of push, we were accelerated to close to the front of the line, because the certification then drives the activation of all of the other platforms and partners within their marketplace,” he said.

Ettridge said there is no other way to scale the business than with someone who already has active partners like Pax8.

“The Pax8culture and community is is spot on, like it's exactly the community powered energy that we need,” he explained.

“It is to activate the partners to be able to lead certification programs for however many of their clients they want to take this to market.”

CyberCert aims to be live on Pax8 by September 1.