KUALA LUMPUR: ACE Market-listed Securemetric Bhd recently signed a partnership agreement with AVM Cloud Sdn Bhd (AVM Cloud) to collaborate on the delivery of accessible public key infrastructure (PKI) solutions and certificate lifecycle managed services through the AVM Cloud digital marketplace.

The event, held in conjunction with the World Congress of IT (WCIT) 2022, was finalised between Securemetric chief executive officer (CEO) Edward Law and AVM Cloud CEO David Chan and witnessed by Penang chief minister Chow Kon Yeow and the National Tech Association of Malaysia (PIKOM) chairman Dr Sean Seah.

"The partnership will certainly open new doors for business opportunities and greater reach, and undoubtedly further strengthen AVM Cloud digital marketplace's mission to be an integrated centre for innovative technology solutions," said David in a statement.

A subsidiary of Time dotCom Bhd, AVM Cloud has a strong reputation for being on par with global cloud service providers, with over 200 corporate customers and 250 cloud tenants across various segments, including the financial services industry, conglomerates, education, government-linked companies (GLCs) and retail and distribution.

Securemetric is well known within the industry for its mission-critical digital security systems development and implementation experience, with a pool of certified engineers constantly coming up with innovative technology solutions for businesses to thrive.

"We strengthen our technology offerings by collaborating with world-class partners and clients like AVM Cloud," said Edward.

"We firmly believe in win-win value-added partnerships that maximise the synergies of all our stakeholders," he said.

This partnership between AVM Cloud and Securemetric will bring to market the first locally hosted PKI-as-a-Service to serve the needs of the financial services, government, and corporate sectors.

This managed service provides the required certificate authority (CA) platform and certificate inventory system to simplify enterprises' certificate and security operations – hence enabling organisations to set up their own private CA or outsource their CA management to either or both AVM Cloud or Securemetric.

PKI governs the issuance of digital certificates to protect sensitive data, provide unique digital identities for users, devices and applications, and secure end-to-end communications.

It serves as the framework for encryption and cybersecurity that protects communications between the server and the client.

A private CA is when an organisation creates its own local CA without going for an external one.

The certificates are signed with the private key of the organisation's root certificate.

"Private CAs can be created to issue certificates for an organisation's internal network where discretion is required, and only a select group of users are involved. They may include virtual private networks (VPN), sensitive databases, secure mail servers, and others," said Edward.

"According to our studies, the Global PKI Market is valued at some US$3.9 billion (approximately RM17.66 billion) with an estimated three per cent contribution from Southeast Asia.

"This market can only increase in the years and decades ahead and, with this partnership, both Securemetric and AVM Cloud aim to ride on the upward trajectory.

"At the same time, we aim to reassure customers that they are empowered to operate more securely and confidently thanks to our top-notch digital solutions," he added.