Symantec Buyout of VeriSign Security Business: Behind the Deal

Cybersecurity News

May 21, 2010

2 Min Read

Symantec has finalized an agreement to acquire VeriSign’s identity and authentication business for $1.28 billion in cash. Here’s a look at the particulars.

As part of the deal, Symantec gains a range of expertise related to Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) Certificate Services, the Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) Services, the VeriSign Trust Services and the VeriSign Identity Protection (VIP) Authentication Service.

Symantec President and CEO Enrique Salem, mused over the acquisition, noting that with the ‘evolving’ threats in the world, it’s important that people have confidence in their online interactions and that IT pros can comfortably provide users with levels of access while not putting the company data at risk:

“We believe the solution to this dilemma lies in the ubiquity of identity-based security. With the combined products and reach from Symantec and VeriSign, we are poised to drive the adoption of identity security…”

The acquisition is expected to be completed in September 2010.

Symantec’s scoop up of this part of VeriSign also coalesces with their recent offering of hosted cloud-based endpoint security. As a whole, Symantec plans to promote:

Identity security: proving that people and sites are who they say they are
Mobile and other device security: securing mobile and other devices and the information on them
Information protection: protecting information from loss, attack, theft and misuse and ensuring the ability to recover that information
Context and relevance: delivering information that is relevant to people in both their personal and professional roles
Cloud security: ensuring the secure delivery of applications and information from both public and private clouds

Lastly, Symantec is pushing ease-of-use, specifically that there’s a “Speed-of-delivery” and user preferences of ‘freedom’ (in the sense they can work anywhere without anything compromising their security nor preventing them from working all together).

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