Unified cybersecurity vendor WatchGuard today announced that it has signed The Climate Pledge, formalizing its sustainability and carbon emissions goals worldwide. The announcement coincides with Earth Day.
Security vendor joins Amazon-founded sustainability agreement
The Climate Pledge is a commitment by companies to achieve net-zero carbon emissions by 2040. This voluntary program, co-founded by Amazon and Global Optimism in 2019, encourages businesses worldwide to adopt policies that reduce greenhouse gas emissions produced throughout their supply chains.
As a signatory of The Climate Pledge, WatchGuard says it will:
- Measure and report greenhouse gas emissions regularly.
- Implement decarbonization strategies in line with the Paris Agreement through real business changes and innovations, including efficiency improvements, renewable energy sources, material reductions, and other strategies to eliminate carbon emissions.
- Neutralize any remaining emissions with additional, quantifiable, real, permanent, and socially beneficial offsets to achieve net-zero annual carbon emissions by 2040.
“As a cybersecurity provider, we spend every day thinking about how to protect the world from threats. Businesses like WatchGuard have the power—and the responsibility—to step up and help fight the threat of unchecked climate change,” said Prakash Panjwani, CEO of WatchGuard Technologies Inc. “That’s why we’re joining The Climate Pledge, doubling down on our sustainability initiatives, and committing to net-zero carbon by 2040. The reality is, no one individual or company can solve this problem alone, but together, we can secure a safer, more sustainable future for our grandchildren and theirs.”
New sustainability goals address the entire WatchGuard supply chain
The Climate Pledge calls for participating organizations to reduce Scope 1, 2, and 3 emissions as they work to achieve net-zero emissions by 2040. Those emissions are broken down into the three scopes based on the following characteristics:
- Scope One: Emissions tied directly to actions and products from the company itself, including company-owned and maintained facilities.
- Scope Two: Emissions produced by another facility tied to the organization’s ability to function, including energy, gas, and other direct inputs into an organization’s production.
- Scope Three: These emissions are accrued across the entire supply chain of an organization, encompassing everything from raw materials and capital goods to business and employee commute travel. Some organizations also include emissions associated with a product’s usage and eventual disposal in their scope 3 reporting.
WatchGuard says it will begin by ensuring its supply chain, including logistics, manufacturing, and cloud infrastructure suppliers, aligns with its sustainability goals and contributes to an overall reduction in carbon output. Additionally, the company will continue its efforts to manage the carbon footprint of its own facilities and says it also works to address the emissions caused by workers’ commutes to office locations.
Jay Lindenauer, the head of network security and executive sponsor of The Climate Pledge at WatchGuard, told Channel Insider the decision to sign The Climate Pledge was made to further drive sustainability efforts that WatchGuard has implemented over the past several years.
“We’re proud of our sustainability commitments thus far, and we’re excited to go even further to achieve net-zero emissions by 2040. Prior to signing The Climate Pledge, our sustainability program included compliance with WEEE, RoHS, and ISO 14064 standards, as well as recycling and waste reduction in our facilities,” Lindenauer said. “We’ve already significantly reduced our energy consumption and waste across our facilities and helped employees, partners, customers, and manufacturers work to shrink our collective environmental footprint. As a signatory of the Pledge, we’re doubling down on our sustainability practices to reach net-zero, benchmarking our carbon footprint, and establishing new programs to reduce emissions across our hardware supply chain, distribution and delivery channels, travel, product usage and disposal, and more.”
“All companies can play a role in creating a safer, more sustainable future,” he continued. “It would be nice if our commitment inspired other companies to take action and build out their own sustainability programs as well, but it’s not why we signed the Pledge. It’s in our DNA as a company to be accountable and we saw this as an opportunity to deepen our accountability to the environment and the communities our employees, partners, and customers call home.”
2025 is already a busy year at WatchGuard
Today’s news is one of several announcements the company has made in 2025. It kicked off the year by announcing its acquisition of ActZero and then continued to bring new solutions to its partners by adding to its SASE portfolio in March.
WatchGuard also joined the AWS ISV Accelerate Program earlier this year. The moves come as the security vendor continues to address the needs of MSPs in an increasingly complex threat landscape.
In December, WatchGuard CISO Corey Nachreiner told Channel Insider that he thinks the re-emergence of SASE, AI-enabled security, and ongoing market trends are key priorities for any MSP to consider as they develop security offerings for their clients.
“You’ll do better if you don’t give them a choice in tools but rather, you determine which tools work the best for you and instead you give your clients a choice in the services you provide,” Nachreiner said, noting that MSPs and MSSPs can select the tech stack that works best for them as providers and build their offerings around the tools.
Our sister site TechRepublic broke down the environmental impact caused by training and utilizing AI models. Read the full story to learn more about the energy demands of artificial intelligence.