21 Facts About Verisign

Verisign Inc is an American company based in Reston, Virginia, United States that operates a diverse array of network infrastructure, including two of the Internet's thirteen root nameservers, the authoritative registry for the.

Verisign was founded in 1995 as a spin-off of the RSA Security certification services business.

In 2000, Verisign acquired Network Solutions, which operated the, and TLDs under agreements with the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers and the United States Department of Commerce.

Those core registry functions formed the basis for Verisign's naming division, which by then had become the company's largest and most significant business unit.

In 2002, Verisign was charged with violation of the Securities Exchange Act.

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Verisign divested the Network Solutions retail business in 2003, retaining the domain name registry (wholesale) function as its core Internet addressing business.

Verisign operates two businesses, Naming Services, which encompasses the operation of top-level domains and critical Internet infrastructure, and Network Intelligence and Availability Services, which encompasses DDoS mitigation, managed DNS and threat intelligence.

Verisign operates two of the Internet's thirteen "root servers" which are identified by the letters A-M.

Verisign generates the globally recognized root zone file and is responsible for processing changes to that file once they are ordered by ICANN via IANA and approved by the U S Department of Commerce.

Verisign is the only one of the 12 root server operators to operate more than one of the thirteen root nameservers.

Verisign began shopping that year for a new permanent home shortly after moving.

In January 2001, Verisign mistakenly issued two Class 3 code signing certificates to an individual claiming to be an employee of Microsoft.

In 2002, Verisign was sued for domain slamming – transferring domains from other registrars to themselves by making the registrants believe they were merely renewing their domain name.

In September 2003, Verisign introduced a service called Site Finder, which redirected Web browsers to a search service when users attempted to go to non-existent or domain names.

Subsequently, Verisign filed a lawsuit against ICANN in February 2004, seeking to gain clarity over what services it could offer in the context of its contract with ICANN.

In keeping with ICANN's charter to introduce competition to the domain name marketplace, Verisign agreed to give up its operation of top-level domain in 2003 in exchange for a continuation of its contract to operate, which, at the time had more than 34 million registered addresses.

Verisign enlisted numerous IT and telecom heavyweights including Microsoft, IBM, Sun Microsystems, MCI, and others, to assert that Verisign had a perfect record operating.

Verisign was aided by the fact that several of the other bidders were based outside the United States, which raised concerns in national security circles.

In February 2012 Verisign revealed that their network security had been repeatedly breached in 2010.

Verisign stated that the breach did not impact the Domain Name System that they maintain, but would not provide details about the loss of data.

Verisign was widely criticized for not disclosing the breach earlier and apparently attempting to hide the news in an October 2011 SEC filing.