There are two types of WatchGuard Cloud accounts — Subscriber and Service Provider. Your account type determines whether you can manage other WatchGuard Cloud accounts, which operator roles you can assign to users in your account, and how you manage operators for your account.
Subscriber Account
If you use security services such as AuthPoint, but do not manage other accounts, your WatchGuard Cloud account is a Subscriber account. From WatchGuard Cloud, you can configure and manage your own security services and see related metrics and reports.
Subscriber accounts can have these built-in operator roles: Administrator, Analyst, Observer.
Service Provider Account
If you manage customer accounts, your WatchGuard Cloud account is a Service Provider account. From WatchGuard Cloud, you can manage your inventory and allocate devices, licenses, and AuthPoint users to customer accounts. You can also manage security services for your own account and for all customer accounts that you manage.
Service Provider accounts can have these built-in operator roles: Owner, Sales, Helpdesk, Auditor.
If you are a WatchGuard Partner, your WatchGuard Cloud account is automatically provisioned as a tier-1 Service Provider account.
For information on how to create custom operator roles, go to Manage Custom Operator Roles.
Multi-Tier Architecture
WatchGuard Cloud is a multi-tenant, multi-tier system. The terms tier-1 and tier-n are used to distinguish the different levels of Service Provider and Subscriber accounts.
Tier-1 Account
A WatchGuard Cloud account that is associated with a company account on the WatchGuard website is a tier-1 account. If you activate WatchGuard products and services in your own WatchGuard account, your WatchGuard Cloud account is a tier-1 account.
A tier-1 account can be a Service Provider or Subscriber.
In a tier-1 WatchGuard Cloud account, operators use the same user account credentials to log in to WatchGuard Cloud as they use to log in to the WatchGuard website (www.watchguard.com).
Tier-n Accounts (Tier-2 to Tier-5)
Accounts that are not tier-1 are referred to as tier-n accounts.
You can create accounts in up to five tiers (for example, tier-1 Service Provider > tier-2 Service Provider > tier-3 Service Provider > tier-4 Service Provider > tier-5 Subscriber).
A tier-n account can be a Service Provider or Subscriber. Tier-n accounts that are Service Providers can also have their own tier-n customer account (My Account).
This diagram illustrates an example of a WatchGuard Cloud account structure (left), opposed to a tier-1 Subscriber account (right).
WatchGuard Cloud for Service Providers