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Thawte Bought by Verisign
ChrisKnight was of the many people that wrote with the story on news.com that VeriSign has purchased Thatwe Consulting. Purchase price was reportedly $575 million, although the deal must still be approved.
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Heck, I don't weigh that much less than that. Neither do a bunch of my friends. Maybe we should get together and beat up on Verisign and steal its lunch-money.
These companies really have to learn that it's not that impressive if they weigh only slightly more than the average American male. Even if America is a chronically obese nation.
Maybe Microsoft would like to help them out by hooking them up with some of that combination bovine-growth hormone and human-g rowth hormone regimen that's keeping Gates's hair so glossy and thighs so sexy. They'll help make Verisign a man. How do I know this? Try searching Google for "make you a man". Microsoft comes up as #2. Does Judge Jackson know about this?....
"If one is really a superior person, the fact is likely to leak out without too much assistance" -- John Andrew Holmes
First of all, good move, Thawte. They've successfully maximized shareholder value. In other words, they've sold out at the right time. Verisign, having grabbed a lot of the big names, will probably go on to increase its market share; Thawte, having failed to, may be at the peak of its value - especially when, not if, the net stock bubble collapses.
:-), and a 200-lb gorilla, with enough marketshare, can drive the market into inferiority and incompetence quite easily. Look at the consumer operating system market if you don't believe me :-).
Bad move, Verisign. First of all, the net stock bubble is called a bubble for a reason. However, when acquiring other companies, you should buy for value or make acquisitions strategically. Does Thawte own anything, other than marketshare, that Verisign doesn't already have? In most mergers and buyouts, the purchaser usually ends up losing equity when the euphoria wears off. I doubt that this will be an exception to the rule.
I can deplore Microsoft's mania in acquisitions, but more often than not they acquire intelligently - taking out possible competitors, buying into new technologies. They don't acquire just for the hell of it. Paradoxically, they have too much money to do that.
Bad move, for the global net. Thawte is a South African company, and so the purchase takes an international venture with global reach and sucks it into the gaping maw of Silicon Valley. Not that there's anything intrinsically wrong with the valley. It's just that something sticks in my craw with one location dominating an entire industry.
Bad move, for everyone. A 200-lb gorilla in any industry is bad for business. A 200-lb gorilla in the security industry is worse. The security industry is based on trust (or at least mistrust)
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There is no premature anti-fascism. -Ernest Hemingway
Please moderate this up!
You can submit your comments on this matter to:
newcase.atr@usdoj.gov
I have sent my comments and sent this email to my friends, do the same!
Thawte provided signing support for SSLeay keys very early on. Verisign is slow to change.
On the other hand if things get complicated (if your verification documents for a certificate are not "normal") then dealing with Thawte can be a pain. Thawte has its head office in Africa. Have you ever tried to send a long fax to Africa? If you get a clean line you might get one or two pages through at a time.
Looking at the list of the 27 root certifications in IE 5, i see that 21 of them are either held by Thawte or Verisign. Now, I've been a Verisign customer for a long time, and I like the fact that I can count on their root certificate being in 99% of browsers out there, but there was always a peace of mind that came with knowing I had Thawte to go to if i was ever dissatisfied. Well, no more.
Yikes.
Verisign is sure to jack up their prices if and when the deal goes through. There should be a market for cheap certificates sold to small sites that want to be secure without paying a Verisign tax.
There's already open-source software out there for generating certificates. The other barriers to entry are:
1. Name recognition. If you're in charge of security at a medium to big size company, your chief goal is to protect your own ass. To that end, you'll spend the extra money to buy Verisign, because nobody ever got fired for using Verisign.
2. Being in the browser. This is a big one; your CA cert has to be pre-loaded into your user's browsers. This involves paying many thousands of dollars to MS and Netscape.
The other things you need to be a CA are:
1. Legal staff and Certification Practice Statement.
2. Clerks for researching and verifying identity.
3. A killer operations and security infrastructure to protect the CA's key and prevent unauthorized signing.
CAs can and should be a commodity. The thing to watch out for is Verisign introducing proprietary technology into their certificates, or making exclusive deals with the browser manufacturers.
I've always thought that Thawte did
a better job than Verisign. They are cheaper
too, I believe..(though it's been a while)..
They do NOTHING for you! They don't even
make your site more secure...
They are snake-oil salesmen, at best.
Watch as Bruce Schneier gives these jerks a firm talking-to: here
-- The Funk, The Whole Funk, And Nothing But The Funk
Consider the following:
This is bad news for consumers.
I got a Thawte certificate because their website promised that if laws ever changed in the country their database was in such that they had to divulge its contents, they were prepared to move their database within hours. I also got it because of their support for PGP public key signing.
Now, they're being bought out by Verisign who I have no such trust in, and who isn't, IMHO, a good member of the community. I'm not at all happy about this.
I think I'm going to ask the my Thawte certificate be revoked, and all my data wiped from their databases. I do NOT trust Verisign at all. They seem more like opportunists out to make a buck than people who really understand the paranoid world of security.
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