Verisign

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VeriSign, Inc.

logo
legal form Corporation
ISIN US92343E1029
founding 1995
Seat Reston , Virginia , United States
United StatesUnited States 
management D. James Bidzos ( CEO )
Number of employees 1,019
sales 1,059,000,000 US dollars
Branch Domains and IT security
Website www.verisigninc.com
As of December 31, 2015

Verisign is a US company based in Reston , Virginia .

Among other things, it operates the top-level domains .com and .net as well as two of the global root name servers and generally offers services for the secure operation of websites , for example also to ward off DDoS attacks . Verisign shares have been listed on the NASDAQ since 1998 and are part of the S&P 500 index of the largest US companies.

history

Verisign was founded on April 12, 1995 as a subsidiary of RSA Security . The purpose of the company was to offer standardized services for two-factor authentication and identity management on the Internet. By the turn of the millennium, Verisign took over various companies; in 1999, it bought its largest competitor, Thawte . The brands of acquired companies have been maintained in the subsequent period, Sun Verisign gave example, continue under the name GeoTrust, RapidSSL and Co. SSL certificates out.

In 2000, the takeover of Network Solutions followed , which until a few months earlier had a monopoly on the allocation of the popular top-level domains .com , .net and .org . The purchase was in the form of a share swap unwound and had a volume of 21 billion US dollars . The US Department of Commerce and ICANN formally agreed to the takeover. While the administration for .org was transferred to the Public Interest Registry at the beginning of 2003 and Network Solutions itself was sold to a private investor group, Verisign kept the administration of .com and .net. With this step, the separation between registry and registrar, which ICANN had always required until 2010, was formally carried out.

After Verisign owned the two most popular generic top-level domains with .com and .net and had also been involved in .cc via its subsidiary eNIC since 2001 , the registry of .tv was also acquired in January 2002 for 45 million US dollars. Verisign later also bought London's Global Name Registry, Ltd. which is responsible for .name .

In German-speaking countries , Verisign became known primarily through the takeover of Jamba : In 2004, the company announced that it would acquire the Berlin cell phone portal for 273 million US dollars, some of which was paid in shares and in cash. A cooperation was then agreed with the News Corporation , which was intended to strengthen the content of the offer and under which 51 percent of the shares in Jamba were sold again. A few years later, Verisign also gave the remaining 49 percent to the majority shareholder and thus completely separated from this division, making Jamba a subsidiary of Fox Mobile Entertainment .

In 2005, the contract between ICANN for the administration of .net expired , which is why Verisign had to formally apply for a top-level domain for the first time. In addition to the Irish competitor Afilias , which operates .info , and two smaller service providers, the German registry DENIC also applied for the continuation of .net. Ultimately, Verisign prevailed among all applicants and was able to continue the .net domain until 2011.

In October of the same year, Verisign and ICANN announced that they wanted to amicably settle their disputes, which have persisted since the Sitefinder affair (see review ), about the precise tasks of the respective side. The company should discuss all changes to its services as a registry with ICANN , in return the administration of .com should be continued for further years without a new tender. The agreement was criticized by industry experts, but was ultimately accepted anyway.

In 2005, the IT security specialist iDefense was also acquired, with which Verisign further expanded its position in this segment. The company specialized in detecting cyber attacks and security gaps in its customers' systems at an early stage and tracking current developments in the hacker scene. The purchase price was $ 40 million in cash and iDefense was fully integrated into Verisign. Former products and services of the provider are provided below under the Verisign iDefense brand .

In 2010 Verisign announced that it wanted to concentrate on the domain and IT security business and therefore sell the SSL encryption division . Acquirer was Symantec for 1.28 billion US dollars in the form of shares and cash, for example, that of the products of Verisign with its own services, such as PGP Corporation wanted to merge. The reason given for the takeover was consistently falling prices for issuing SSL certificates. In the summer of 2017, Symantec sold the certificates division to its competitor DigiCert .

At the end of 2012, ICANN extended the contract for .com and .net with VeriSign, Inc. for another six years, but the company was unable to assert itself with a demand for higher fees against the Internet administration. Initially, Verisign pleaded several times for higher fees in order to be able to continue to guarantee security and stability in the operation of the top-level domains. Despite the economic defeat, US billionaire Warren Buffett took a stake in Verisign for a few months , and his holding company Berkshire Hathaway acquired a share of US $ 165 million in the company.

Products

Verisign divides its business into the two divisions Registry Services and NIA Services as well as an area for the administration of the company ( Operations Infrastructure ). In the first section, all activities relating to the allocation of .com , .net , .cc , .tv and .name domains are combined, as well as the operation of the technical infrastructure for .gov , .jobs and .edu . In the NIA Services area, iDefense products and services as well as a so-called Managed DNS and DDoS Protection Services are combined, all of which are assigned to IT security.

Given the popularity of .com - and .net addresses Verisign is generally regarded as the most important contracting authority of domains. The company holds several events annually under the title Registrar Days , which are commonly classified as industry meetings and are intended to have a significant influence on developments in the market. According to official information, VeriSign managed more than 125.9 million domains in September 2013 .

criticism

In September 2003, Verisign came under fire after setting up a redirect for all unregistered domains under .com and .net to an in-house search engine . This was implemented using wildcards at the domain name system level , so that users around the world were initially unable to bypass it. Organizations such as the Internet Software Consortium protested against this measure, as they saw in it an impermissible interference with the infrastructure of the Internet. ICANN later also requested that automatic forwarding be stopped, whereupon Verisign finally gave up the service.

With the introduction of internationalized domain names , the company came under fire again after it automatically transferred some particularly valuable domains from the RACE to the IDN standard so that they could no longer be registered by other interested parties. Experts and, for example, DENIC once again assessed the behavior as negative, in particular because it violated the principle of first come, first served . According to Verisign, ICANN had previously officially approved the conversion of RACE domains into the IDN process.

As the registry of the two most popular generic top-level domains .com and .net, Verisign plays a special role in the entire industry. In the course of this, the company was repeatedly accused of a lack of transparency, especially with regard to the distribution of certain domains compared to other top-level domains. To address this allegation, Verisign began publishing real-time statistics in July 2012 . In addition to the number of registered domains, this also contains extensive information about the zone file , e.g. B. dead domains not stored there . In addition, a so-called Domain Name Industry Brief has been published regularly for some time .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c VeriSign Fact Sheet. VeriSign, accessed June 8, 2012 .
  2. ↑ a b Annual Report 2015
  3. ↑ RSA and Verisign Team Up On Cloud-Based, Two-Factor Authentication Offering. (No longer available online.) RSA October 8, 2009, archived from the original January 18, 2013 ; accessed on May 17, 2013 : "Twenty-five years ago, RSA pioneered two-factor authentication and encryption and in 1995, Verisign was founded as a separate entity leveraging RSA technology to develop and provide digital identities through a managed services model . "
  4. ^ Marcia Savage: VeriSign Acquires Thawte, Signio. In: CRN. December 20, 1999, accessed on May 17, 2013 (English): "Internet security vendor VeriSign, Inc. said Monday it acquired privately held Thawte Consulting of South Africa, a provider of digital certificates to Web sites and software developers."
  5. ↑ Melanie Austria Farmer: VeriSign buys Network Solutions in $ 21 billion deal. In: CNET. March 7, 2000, accessed on May 17, 2013 (English): "Security software maker VeriSign today said it agreed to acquire Net name registrar Network Solutions in an all-stock deal worth about $ 21 billion."
  6. ↑ Jens Ihlenfeld: VeriSign sells Network Solutions. In: Golem. October 16, 2003, accessed May 17, 2013 : “VeriSign is selling Network Solutions, divesting its business as a public registrar for domains. Network Solutions will be the new owner of Pivotal Private Equity, who will pay a total purchase price of around 100 million US dollars. "
  7. ↑ Daniel Dingeldey: Separation of registry / registrar canceled! In: domain-right. November 18, 2010, accessed on May 17, 2013 : “VeriSign bought NSI for US $ 21 billion in 2000, but had to part with NSI and its registrar business again in 2003 for US $ 60 million, but kept the registry part for .com , .net, while the administration of .org was added to PIR in early 2003. "
  8. ↑ Margaret Kane: VeriSign buys .tv Web domain. In: CNET. January 7, 2002, accessed on May 17, 2013 (English): “VeriSign will take over control of the .tv Web domain by buying .tv Corp. International for $ 45 million cash, the company announced Monday. "
  9. ↑ Michael Arrington: Domain Name Consolidation: Verisign Acquires .Name Guys. In: TechCrunch. October 3, 2008, accessed on May 17, 2013 (English): "Verisign has acquired the London-based, Carlyle-backed company that runs the .name top level domain."
  10. ↑ Jens Ihlenfeld: VeriSign buys Jamba. In: Golem. May 25, 2004, accessed on May 17, 2013 : “VeriSign is buying the Berlin cell phone portal Jamba for a total of US $ 273 million in cash and shares. Jamba mainly makes a living selling ring tones, logos and games for mobile phones. "
  11. ↑ Dawn Kawamoto, Stefan Beiersmann: VeriSign sells Jamba shares to News Corp. In: ZDNet. October 8, 2008, accessed May 17, 2013 : “US Internet service provider VeriSign has announced the sale of its 49 percent minority stake in Jamba. The media group News Corp, which already owns 51 percent of the Berlin ringtone provider, took over the remaining shares for around 200 million dollars. "
  12. ↑ General Information Regarding Designation of the Subsequent .net registry Operator. ICANN, accessed on May 17, 2013 (English): "The current registry agreement between ICANN and VeriSign, Inc. was signed in May 2001, and will expire on June 30, 2005. The agreement provides that ICANN, no later than June 30, 2004 , will adopt an open and transparent procedure for designating a successor registry operator. "
  13. ↑ Florian Hitzelberger: Competition presses VeriSign. In: domain-right. January 27, 2005, accessed May 17, 2013 : “On June 30, 2005, the contract between the Internet government ICANN and the current administrator of .net, the US domain giant VeriSign, ends. The new tender is currently running, in which, in addition to VeriSign and Afilias, the German domain administration agency DENIC is participating. "
  14. ↑ Florian Hitzelberger: VeriSign prevails. In: domain-right. June 20, 2005, accessed on May 17, 2013 : “In a nutshell, ICANN announced last Wednesday that the old administrator VeriSign Inc. will retain the technical upper hand over .net in the future and at least until 2011. One looks in vain for reasons for the decision. "
  15. ^ Joint Statement from Affirmative Voting Board Members. ICANN, February 28, 2006, accessed on May 17, 2013 (English): "Today, the ICANN Board voted to approve the settlement with VeriSign, which includes the new .COM registry agreement."
  16. ↑ Florian Hitzelberger: ICANN / VeriSign still without agreement. In: domain-right. January 5, 2006, accessed on May 17, 2013 : "They wanted to draw a line, end their long-standing feud - but what the Internet government ICANN and ex-monopoly VeriSign wanted to amicably agree on is becoming a target for global criticism."
  17. ↑ Monika Ermert: ICANN Internet Administration cuddles with .com administrator VeriSign. In: heise online. Retrieved October 27, 2005, accessed May 17, 2013 : “The President and CEO of Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, Paul Twomey, is extremely pleased with VeriSign's agreement to extend the registry contract for the .com domain and Specifications for new registry services. "
  18. ↑ Verisign takes over IT security experts iDefense. In: Computerwoche. July 14, 2005, accessed May 17, 2013 : “Verisign continues its shopping spree with the acquisition of iDefense. The Californian IT security provider and domain registrar is raising around 40 million dollars in cash to expand its portfolio of security services. "
  19. ↑ Why VeriSign iDefense? VeriSign, accessed May 17, 2013 : "Verisign's iDefense Services gives information security executives 24/7 access to accurate and actionable cyber intelligence related to vulnerabilities, malicious code, and global threats."
  20. ↑ Andreas Wilkens: Report: Symantec wants to take over VeriSign's authentication services. In: heise Security. May 19, 2010, accessed on May 17, 2013 : "In November 2007, VeriSign announced that it would concentrate on its core competencies in the future."
  21. ↑ CHIP. (No longer available online.) May 20, 2010, archived from the original on February 7, 2012 ; accessed on May 17, 2013 : "The market leader in IT security pays $ 1.28 billion for the VeriSign division, which deals with the SSL encryption technology."
  22. ↑ Symantec sells ailing certificates division to DigiCert. In: silicon.de. August 3, 2017. Retrieved August 3, 2017 .
  23. ↑ Florian Hitzelberger: VeriSign loses fee poker! In: domain-right. December 11, 2012, accessed on May 17, 2013 : “VeriSign Inc., administrator of the two top level domains .com and .net, suffered a surprising defeat in the negotiations for the continuation of the registry contract: the Contract for six years, but there is no automatic price increase. "
  24. ↑ Florian Hitzelberger: Plea for higher .com fees. In: domain-right. November 7, 2012, accessed on May 17, 2013 : “In a lengthy press release, VeriSign pointed out that operation was guaranteed at the highest level of security and stability; this requires investments in capacity, redundancy, network security, protection of intellectual property and personnel. The fee increases envisaged in the draft contract would enable Verisign to make these investments. "
  25. ↑ Noah Buhayar, Zachary Tracer: Berkshire Buys VeriSign, ADM Stakes as Deputies Add Holdings. Bloomberg, February 15, 2013, accessed May 17, 2013 : “Berkshire held 3.69 million shares of the Internet-address database manager VeriSign as of Dec. 31, Buffett's Omaha, Nebraska-based company said yesterday in a regulatory filing disclosing US stockholdings at the end of 2012. "
  26. ↑ Annual Report 2012. (PDF) VeriSign, April 8, 2013, accessed on May 17, 2013 (English, 5.0 MB): “The US Internet service provider VeriSign has announced the sale of its minority stake of 49 percent in Jamba. The media group News Corp, which already owns 51 percent of the Berlin ringtone provider, took over the remaining shares for around 200 million dollars. "
  27. ^ Verisign Registrar Days. Verisign, accessed September 11, 2013 .
  28. ↑ Florian Hitzelberger: Registrar Days from VeriSign. In: domain-right. September 9, 2013, accessed September 11, 2013 .
  29. ↑ Florian Hitzelberger: The economic crisis caught .nl. In: domain-right. November 11, 2013. Retrieved November 11, 2013 .
  30. ↑ Axel Kossel: VeriSign fishes traffic. In: heise online. September 17, 2003, accessed on May 17, 2013 : “Since yesterday, VeriSign has been using its power as administrator of the top-level domains .com and .net to redirect addresses that have not been assigned to its search service. This has network-wide effects. "
  31. ^ Evan Hansen: ICANN asks VeriSign to pull redirect service. In: CNET. September 21, 2003, accessed on May 17, 2013 (English): "The agency that oversees Internet domain names has asked VeriSign to voluntarily suspend a new service that redirects Web surfers to Verisign's site when they try to reach unassigned Web addresses."
  32. ↑ Florian Hitzelberger: Wild West Methods at VeriSign. In: domain-right. January 16, 2004, accessed on May 17, 2013 : "Once again, Verisign relies on Wild West methods: the domain giant from the USA has quietly and secretly started around one million internationalized domain names (IDN) from its early 2001, unofficial test with the so-called RACE standard recoded into the official IDN standard punycode. "
  33. ↑ Monika Ermert: Internationalized domains for .com and .net started. In: heise online. December 15, 2003, accessed on May 17, 2013 : “DeNIC boss Sabine Dolderer said that the first-come-first-serve principle had been clearly violated with the transfer of the RACE test domains to the new standard. DeNIC, the registry responsible for .de domains, will introduce IDN domains under .de on March 1st. "
  34. ↑ Florian Hitzelberger: VeriSign starts real-time statistics. In: domain-right. July 31, 2012, accessed on August 1, 2012 : "VeriSign Inc., administrator of the two most important generic top-level domains .com and .net worldwide, opens its treasure chest: the US company now provides the number of active domain names on a daily basis. Name known. "
  35. ↑ Florian Hitzelberger: Over 252 million domains registered. In: domain-right. April 19, 2013, accessed on April 22, 2013 : "The domain giant VeriSign Inc., registry of the two most important generic top-level domains .com and .net, has published the Domain Name Industry Brief for the fourth quarter of 2012."