Following this month’s official launch of the Matter 1.0 specification, Utah-based DigiCert has become the first Matter-approved root certificate authority (CA).

The approval by the Connectivity Standards Alliance (CSA) means DigiCert can now provide rapid time to market for smart-home manufacturers looking to earn the Matter seal on their products.

A multi-year participant in Matter, DigiCert contributed its expertise to the security and attestation components of the standard and has the scalable technology to enable an efficient path to compliance.

“The introduction of Matter to the smart-home industry is an exciting move that improves interoperability between devices and raises the bar for security, creating a more efficient and secure experience for consumers,” said Mike Nelson, DigiCert vice president of IoT security. “DigiCert has been involved in building the Matter standard for several years, and we’ve already helped many leading companies evaluate their device attestation procedures using our test certificate authority. Now, with our PAA [product attestation authority] approved for production, we are ready to help customers save time in achieving Matter security compliance.”

Matter participants may gain the following benefits by partnering with DigiCert:

• Accelerate time to market in achieving Matter compliance.
• Save money by avoiding the costs of technology, maintenance, staffing and ongoing compliance.
• Enjoy flexible deployment options, including on-premises, hosted or batch issuance.
• Simplify management of device attestation certificates and product attestation intermediates through the DigiCert IoT device manager.
• Gain efficiencies using a scalable platform to sign and secure device updates.

Matter is an industry-led effort of the CSA bringing together manufacturers to achieve secure, reliable and seamless use of smart-home devices. Matter enables IP-based networking and communications across smart-home devices, mobile applications and smart-home ecosystems. Matter devices offer consumers assurances of secure use through a consortium-led standard for authenticating device identity that only allows Matter-certified devices to connect to the network.

“DigiCert has been an integral part of the development of the attestation policy for the Matter release and its inherent improvements in the security of the IoT space,” said Chris LaPre, CSA director of technology. “Device attestation allows existing Matter devices to locally confirm new ones when they have been recognised by the local network, and quickly remove non-compliant devices when needed. Consumers are no longer under the burden of ensuring new devices are secure; it happens automatically.”

DigiCert is a provider of digital trust, enabling individuals and businesses to engage online with the confidence that their footprint in the digital world is secure. DigiCert One, the platform for digital trust, provides organisations with centralised visibility and control over a broad range of public and private trust needs, securing web sites, enterprise access and communications, software, identity, content, and devices.