Market leader in secure transactions, domains - Top Stories - Brief Article

Information Superhighways Newsletter, Dec, 2001

It has the resources to do it, with $1 billion in cash at its disposal. An 800-pound gorilla in its own right, it's valued at nearly $10 billion.

The company pioneered public-key infrastructure (PKI) services in 1995. PKI, if hard to understand, is vital to e-commerce. It enables companies to identify parties in an online communication using digital certificates and to encrypt, or scramble, messages so they are read only by the intended recipients.

The company then acquired Signio Corp. and now offers online payment services. Its acquisition of Network Solutions Inc. (NSI) last year, however, wasn't as obvious a choice.

Since 1993, NSI has had what many in the industry argue is a monopoly on the domain name registry market, thanks to a cooperative agreement with the US government.

As registry for all .com, .net and .org domain names and operator of the domain name system, NSI gets $6 a year for every Web address purchased. VeriSign is expected to retain the .com contract after it expires in 2007 and to bid for the .net contract in 2005.

VeriSign also makes money as one of the many registrars, reselling domain names to customers. It also has 46 affiliates in other countries that pay royalties. The company offers one-stop shopping, from buying a domain name to creating a Web site and enabling e-commerce.