is a company based in
Mountain View, California that operates a diverse array of network infrastructure, including two of the
Internet 's thirteen
Root Nameserver s, the generic
Top-level Domain s for
.com and
.net , one of the largest
SS7 signaling networks in North America, and the RFID directory for
EPCGlobal . VeriSign also provides a variety of security and telecom services ranging from
Digital Certificate s, payments processing, and managed
Firewall s to mobile call roaming, toll-free call database queries and downloadable digital content for mobile devices. The company groups all of these functions under the banner of 'intelligent infrastructure' services.
VeriSign was founded in
1995 as a spin-off of the
RSA Security certification services business. The new company received licenses to key cryptographic patents held by RSA and a time limited non-compete agreement. The new company served as a
Certificate Authority (CA) — a role it still fulfills — and its initial mission was "providing trust for the Internet and Electronic Commerce through our Digital Authentication services and products." VeriSign now has more than 3,000,000 certificates in operation for everything from military to financial services and retail applications, making it the largest CA behind the
Encryption and authentication on the Internet, which most people recognize as the small padlock icon in their Web browser when shopping online.
The company held an
Initial Public Offering on
30 January 1998 for US$14 a share. The pre-IPO investors included RSA Data Security Inc., Bessemer Ventures, Kleiner-Perkins, VISA International, Ameritech, Mitsubishi, Security Dynamics, and Fischer International. Along the way, VeriSign broadened its portfolio of "infrastructure services" by acquiring a number of additional businesses, including
Network Solutions in 2000 (from which it derived the domain name business, and later spun off the customer-facing 'registrar' component), Illuminet in 2001 (which marked the company's first foray into telecommunications), Guardent in 2003 (which improved its managed security offering), and Jamba! in 2004 (which is called Jamster! in English-speaking countries and consists of downloadable digital content for mobile phones).
As Of 2005 , VeriSign takes in more than $1 billion in annual revenue ($1.17 billion for FY 2004) with more than 3000 employees worldwide. The CEO is
Stratton Sclavos . The business is divided into two large divisions: Internet Services and Communications Services.
The Internet Services division includes Naming & Directory Services, which houses the domain name registry for .com and .net, as well as other DNS-related services, and
RFID services; and Security Services, which spans a diverse set of capabilities. Security Services includes managed security services (
Firewalls , intrusion detection and prevention, vulnerability protection,
Phishing response, etc.), email security (anti-spam, anti-virus), strong authentication (tokens and remote access validation), payment services (ecommerce transactions and fraud protection) as well as the original
Digital Certificate /SSL business. VeriSign claims to handle 14 billion domain name system (
DNS ) inquiries daily, 35% of North American e-commerce, and encryption for the "majority" of secure Web sites.
The Communications Services group acts as a service provider to the global telecommunications sector, with a similarly diverse set of capabilities. The division offers a variety of services for both wireline and wireless telcos, including pre-paid and post-paid billing; network interoperability for text messaging and call roaming; and the database and mediation services that power caller ID,
Local Number Portability (LNP), wireless LNP,
VoIP , call routing, toll-free call directories, and more. VeriSign also offers a white-labeled retail wireless content portal which it operates directly to consumer under the Jamba! and Jamster! brands. The stats on VeriSign's communications network are also impressive: 2.7 billion phone call connections, 10 million caller IDs, and 3 million game, ringtone and picture downloads per day.
In recent years, VeriSign has faced some contentious issues with
ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers), the quasi-governmental body that oversees Internet protocols. In September 2003, VeriSign introduced a service called
Site Finder , which redirected web browsers to a search service when users attempted to go to nonexistent .com or .net domain names. ICANN asserted that VeriSign had overstepped the terms of its contract with the
Dept. Of Commerce , which in essence grants VeriSign the right to operate the DNS for .com and .net, and VeriSign shut down the service. Subsequently, VeriSign filed a lawsuit against ICANN in February 2004, seeking to gain clarity over what services it could offer in the context of ICANN's sometimes opaque governing process. The claim was moved from federal to California state court in August 2004 and is still pending. More information about the legal proceedings is available
here . In late 2005 Verisign and ICANN announced a proposed settlement which allows Verisign much more control over the .com registry. The documents concerning these settlements are available
here . The terms of this proposed settlement are themselves contentious, and have received widespread critcism. The
ICANN comments mailing list archive documents some of these.
In other negotiations with ICANN, VeriSign gave up operation of the .org top-level domain in 2003 in return for continued rights over .com, the largest domain with more than 34 million registered domain names. .org is now run by a partnership between the non-profit Internet Society (ISOC) and the Irish for-profit company
Afilias , which also runs the
.info domain. In mid-2005, the existing contract for the operation of .net expired and five companies, including VeriSign, bid for control of it. VeriSign's bid was backed by numerous IT and telecom heavyweights including Microsoft, IBM, Sun Microsystems, MCI and others, which all assert that VeriSign has a perfect record operating .net which should be extended given the critical importance of .net as the domain that underlies numerous "backbone" network services. On 8th June 2005 ICANN announced that Verisign had been approved to operate .net until 2011. More information on the .net bidding process is available
here .
- Formed April 1995
- Netscape Server IDs ship June 1995
- Secure Email launched January 1996
- VeriSign Japan launched with NTT February 1996
- Code Siging launch with Microsoft March 1996
- US DOC approves Global ID to enable strong cryptographic software export June 1997
- SecureIT acquisition announced July 1998
- Managed PKI service version 4.0 October 1998
- Offers free Y2k testing certs November 1998
- Wireless PKI offering launched December 1999
- Thawte acquisition announced December 1999
- Signio acquisition announced February 2000
- Network Solutions acquired June 2000
- GreatDomains.com acquired October 2000
- Illuminet acquired December 2001
- HO Systems acquisition February 2002
- Network Solutions registrar sold November 2003
- Guardent acquisition announced December 2003
- Jamba! acquired June 2004
- Lightsurf acquisition announced January 2005
- R4 Global Solutions acquisition announced May 2005
- iDefense acquisition announced July 2005
- Moreover Technologies acquisition announced October 2005
- Weblogs, Inc. acquisition announced October 2005
- Acquisition of Verisign's Payment Gateway assets by eBay(Paypal) announced October 2005
