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GeoTrust a leader in identity verification and network security solutions for e-business, has rapidly become the world's second largest certificate authority (with leadership positions in North America, the UK and Germany) by offering rapid delivery and low-cost digital credentials. GeoTrust enables organizations of all sizes to secure online transactions, confirm and protect identities, and operate fully managed trusted environments for conducting e-business.
GeoTrust's enterprise security products prevent unauthorized access to networks, verify the integrity and authenticity of documents and applications and combat the spread of viruses and malware. The company's web security services offer hosting providers and businesses digital certificates for transaction security and patent-pending smart seals to ensure trusted identities on the web. Additionally, GeoTrust helps consumers combat the growing scourge of identity theft with a free and easy-to-use toolbar.
The market for SSL digital certificates continues to expand, driven by an increase in online commerce; the desire of an increasing number of organizations to open their networks to remote employees, customers and partners using applications such as secure portals; a growing demand for web services security and the need to transmit information securely over public networks.
Under the leadership of Neal Creighton at corporate HQ in Boston, US and a seasoned management team, GeoTrust experienced strong success in 2004. The company surpassed the market leader's individual digital certificate brands in North America, and so far in 2005 has achieved leadership in the UK and Germany, and also gained the largest number of active certificates among all certificate authorities. Also in 2004, GeoTrust forged partnerships with Adobe, Sun Microsystems and Microsoft.
Three years ago, GeoTrust revolutionized the digital certificate issuance process with the launch of QuickSSL®, the industry's first automated process allowing web hosting providers and businesses to apply for and receive digital certificates in 10 minutes or less. Traditional waiting periods lasted from three to seven days, and often still do for competitive products.
GeoTrust's vision was to dramatically improve upon this process by creating an automated method to cost-effectively reduce the waiting period without compromising certificate strength or the verification process. QuickSSL gained traction among companies that wanted to rapidly secure web sites or offer customers fast access to secure sites.
Today, Internet phishing attacks and online fraud constitute a large and growing problem.
Industry analyst firm Gartner Inc. found that nearly 60 million Americans have received emails from phishers, hackers or cyber thieves pretending to be trusted service providers. Of those 60 million, nearly two million have become victims by providing personal information such as credit card, bank and Government issued identity numbers and mailing addresses. The damage can be substantial, with serious financial and personal impact.
To combat phishing attacks, in 2004 GeoTrust launched TrustWatch®, the industry's first free toolbar developed to help consumers combat online identity theft and credit card fraud by providing a site verification rating. TrustWatch helps users instantly verify the authenticity of a website and check security standards of websites that are conducting online business or requesting confidential information, using an easy to understand red light, green light, yellow light rating system.
Identity verification, using products and services such as those provided by GeoTrust, is the first and critically important element in any secure online transaction. Unless you can establish a trusted identity for an individual, organization, device or application, business and commerce cannot be securely conducted over the Internet. All GeoTrust products and services, for businesses and consumers alike, are designed to help verify identity, and then issue digital credentials to the person, business, device or application so that network transactions can be accomplished in an environment of trust.
Today, identity verification remains a largely unrecognised component of corporate identity management policies and solutions. Yet when properly applied, identity verification can prevent everything from the nuisance and economic cost associated with spam, to the downtime and network damage caused by viruses, to the personal identity theft and fraud of phishing. In addition, the growing population of mobile employees, expanding use of "smart" devices, rise in business partners exchanging sensitive information over public networks and steady growth of web services, which allow applications to exchange information with no human intervention, make automated identity verification a necessity. Surprisingly, commonly used identity management solutions do not perform this function. Rather, they assume that the identity has already been verified and simply govern what information that individual, machine or application can access.
GeoTrust, with its range of products and services geared toward both enterprises and consumers, is at the forefront of companies working to provide fast, cost-effective solutions to help verify identities online. In the future, a trusted public utility with a global scope and charter may emerge to eliminate scourges such as phishing that are aimed at hijacking personal identity. Today, GeoTrust's business is growing rapidly as companies and organizations worldwide turn to it to create an environment of trust online.
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