[cobalt-users] Bad News For Secure Certificates

["Dan" <dan@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Now, how will we get "wildcard" SSL certificates?

This just in:

December 20, 1999 07:30 AM
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., Dec. 20 /PRNewswire/ -- VeriSign, Inc. VRSN , the
leading provider of Internet trust services, today announced that it has
acquired privately held Thawte Consulting of South Africa, the world's
second largest provider of digital certificates to websites and software
developers. The acquisition further extends VeriSign's leadership in
delivering the trust infrastructure needed by businesses, individuals and
software developers to secure a wide range of online communications and
transactions over the Internet.
"Establishing a consistent, globally-interoperable trust infrastructure for
the Internet has been our mission since day one," said Stratton Scalvos,
president and CEO of VeriSign. "The combination of VeriSign and Thawte's
customer bases, widely-deployed digital certificate root keys and
highly-skilled engineering and customer-service organizations will enable us
to provide unparalleled trust services to websites, developers, ISPs and
other constituencies across the Internet."

The stock VeriSign will issue in this transaction will have an aggregate
market value of $575 million. The exact number of shares will be determined
based on the trading price of VeriSign common stock prior to the closing
date. The acquisition will be accounted for as a purchase transaction. The
transaction is subject to a number of conditions, including the need to
obtain certain regulatory approvals in South Africa and other customary
conditions.

As a combined entity, VeriSign and Thawte will be able to implement a
consistent set of global standards for the issuance and management of
digital certificates for websites and software developers. VeriSign
currently serves all of the Top 40 e-commerce sites and Fortune 500
companies with a web presence, and thousands of other sites with its range
of Secure Site, Global Site and Code-Signing and certificate services.
Thawte has built a strong franchise through a widely distributed agent
network in over 22 countries around the world. Together, the companies have
over 3300 ISPs, ASPs and Web Hosting companies acting as resellers of their
services. They are also the only two digital certificate providers with
commercial availability of 128-bit website certificates, which enable highly
strong encryption in both domestic and export versions of Microsoft and
Netscape browsers.

"We are thrilled to join forces with VeriSign to enable a worldwide
foundation for e-commerce," said Mark Shuttleworth, president and CEO of
Thawte Consulting. "By combining our respective operations, teams and
customer bases, we will be able to serve a broader set of customers under on
common set of trust principles across the Internet."



--
Dan Kriwitsky