You have used 28 percent of your credit resources
AV outfit Symantec have written a $1.28 billion cheque to buy a
division of VeriSign. The authentication outfit, best known for its
antivirus software for personal computers, wants to secure more things
and has been buying shedloads lately.
VeriSign, whose brand is ubiquitous on the Web for protecting online
transactions, wants to secure fewer things and is finding its traffic
managing division a bit of a spare leg. It collects fees for
registering domain names and has been purging divisions like this for
three years. VeriSign had sold more than a dozen businesses since 2007
for a total of nearly $1 billion. Some were curious choices for
VeriSign to have in the first place, such as a division that did
billing services for telecommunications companies and another that sold
ring tones and insurance for mobile phones.
What Symantec gets out of the VeriSign deal is one of the Web's
best-known brand names for security. VeriSign's logo is ubiquitous on
websites that have bought its security technology. The VeriSign
division that Symantec is buying sells "certificates" to websites that
want protection for their customers' data. The Secure Sockets Layer, or
SSL, certificates allow data to be encrypted between a user's browser
and a website's servers. A padlock icon appears on a user's browser
when that technology is being used.