GeoTrust

Geotrust
Product type Public key certificates
Owner Thoma Bravo
Country United States
Markets World
Website www.geotrust.com

GeoTrust is a digital certificate provider. The GeoTrust brand was bought by Symantec from Verisign in 2010, but agreed to sell the certificate business (including GeoTrust) in August 2017 to private equity and growth capital firm Thoma Bravo LLC.[1]

History

The pre-2001 GeoTrust was focused on the B to B exchange market which never materialized. GeoTrust became one of the few startup dotcom companies able to restart in a new direction and to achieve a successful outcome. With GeoTrust's history, several individuals had the title of co-founder. There are founders of the old GeoTrust which started in 1999 and founders of the restarted company in 2001. These may be viewed as two distinct companies with the same name in completely different businesses.[2]

GeoTrust was a restarted company in 2001 that acquired the security business of Equifax. The Equifax business was the basis of its fast growth. The founders of the restarted company were CEO Neal Creighton, CTO Chris Bailey and Principal Engineer Kefeng Chen. Having no previous fund raising experience Creighton, Bailey and Chen used an existing (almost bankrupt) company as the vehicle to acquire the business they had started at Equifax. The buyout of the Equifax certificate business was inexpensive given the final exit price in 2006.[3]

VeriSign acquired GeoTrust on 5 September 2006 for $125 million. The main investor was St. Paul Venture Capital/VesBridge. ACG/ Mass High tech named VeriSign's acquisition of GeoTrust as the sell side deal of the year for 2006.[4]

Symantec acquired the GeoTrust brand in 2010 as part of its $1.28 billion acquisition of VeriSign's security business.

Symantec announced the sale of its entire certificate business in August 2017 to Thoma Bravo LLC for $1 billion[1] with the intention of merging it with DigiCert[5], following a dispute with Google due to the improper issuance of certificates.[6]

Products

GeoTrust mainly offers three different category of products listed below:

  • SSL Certificates
    • True BusinessID
    • True BusinessID with EV
    • True BusinessID Wildcard SSL
    • QuickSSL®
    • QuickSSL® Premium
    • UC/SAN
  • Signing Services
    • Symantec® Certified Document Solutions
    • My Credential/EPM Credential
    • Public Key Infrastructure solutions
    • Code Signing
  • SSL for Enterprise
    • GeoTrust Enterprise Security Center
    • GeoTrust TrueFlex Subscription Model
    • GeoTrust Secured Seal

References

  1. 1 2 "Symantec to sell Web certificates business to Thoma Bravo: sources". Reuters. 2017-08-02. Retrieved 2018-01-08.
  2. ↑ VeriSign Buys GeoTrust: $125M
  3. ↑ Mass High Tech, ACG name top Tech Dealmakers for 2007 - Mass High Tech: The Journal of New England Technology:
  4. ↑ Mass High Tech, ACG name top Tech Dealmakers for 2007
  5. ↑ "DigiCert Completes Acquisition of Symantec's Website Security and Related PKI Solutions - DigiCert". DigiCert. Retrieved 2018-01-08.
  6. ↑ "Google to kill Symantec certs in Chrome 66, due in early 2018". Retrieved 2018-01-08.
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