Entrust Datacard

Entrust Corp., formerly Entrust Datacard, provides software and hardware used to issue financial cards, e-passport production, user authentication for those looking to access secure networks or conduct financial transactions, trust certificated for websites, mobile credentials, and connected devices. The privately-held company is based in Shakopee, Minnesota and employs more than 2,500 people globally.

History

Entrust Inc

In 1994, Entrust built and sold the first commercially available public key infrastructure. In 1997, Nortel (formerly Northern Telecom) spun off Entrust when it became incorporated in Maryland as a part of a tax strategy.

Entrust originally entered the public SSL market by chaining to the Thawte Root in 1999 creating Entrust.net.

In May 2000, Entrust acquired enCommerce, a provider of authentication and authorization technologies.

In April 2002, Entrust's public key infrastructure technology served as the foundation for the prototype of what is now the United States Federal Bridge Certification Authority. The authority is an element of the trust infrastructure that provides the basis for intergovernmental and cross-governmental secure communications.

In mid-2004, Entrust acquired AmikaNow! Corporation's content scanning, analysis and compliance technology. The technology is designed to automatically analyze and categorize email message and document content based on the contextual meaning, rather than pre-defined word lists.

Entrust acquired Orion Security Solutions, a supplier of public key infrastructure services, in June 2006.

In July 2006, Entrust acquired Business Signatures Corporation, a supplier of non-invasive fraud detection solutions, for US$50 million. From a GAAP accounting perspective, the total purchase price was approximately $55.0 million, including assumed stock options, transaction expenses and net asset value. Business Signatures was founded in 2001 in Redwood City, California, by former executives from Oracle, HP and Cisco. It originally was funded by the Texas Pacific Group, Walden International, Ram Shriram of Google and Dave Roux of Silver Lake Partners.

Prior to it becoming a private-equity company, Entrust was included on the Russell 3000 Index in July 2008. In July 2007, Entrust contributed public key infrastructure technology to the open-source community through Sun Microsystems, Inc. and the Mozilla Foundation. Specifically, Entrust supplied certificate revocation list distribution points (CRL-DP), Patent 5,699,431, to Sun under a royalty-free license for incorporation of that capability into the Mozilla open-source libraries.

In July 2009, Entrust was acquired by Thoma Bravo, a U.S.-based private equity firm, for $124 million.

Datacard Group

The company was established in 1969 as Data Card Addressograph after Willis K. Drake acquired a Minnesota-based firm that produced credit card imprinters. Company founder Willis K. Drake led a team of engineers that invented machines that enabled secure and productive personalization of credit cards beyond the imprinters that Addressograph had offered. Datacard Group's high-volume card issuance systems allowed banks and retailers to personalize 1,500 cards per hour with great precision and security. Until the company launched its technologies, the process was slow and riddled with quality problems.

In 2000, Datacard Group acquired Platform Seven (P7), the smart card technology arm of National Westminster Bank.

A rapidly growing portion of the company's portfolio is focused on instant issuance of credit, debit and prepaid cards. Banks, retailers, credit unions and other organizations issuing cards used for financial transactions are rapidly deploying systems used to issue cards on-demand in branch or store locations. These instant issuance systems are often used for issuing emergency replacements when cards are lost, stolen or compromised by breaches. Most often, they complement centralized operations that focus on mass issuance aspects of a card program.

In 2013 the company acquired Entrust Inc.

Entrust Datacard

In 2014, Datacard Group rebranded as Entrust Datacard.

In June 2019 it acquired general-purpose Hardware Security Module vendor nCipher from Thales Group.

Entrust Corp

On September 14, 2020, the company announced that it has re-branded from ''Entrust Datacard'' to ''Entrust'' and changed its legal entity name to Entrust Corporation. The rebranding recognized the company's emphasis on secure identity, payments and data protection.

In January 2021, Entrust acquired HyTrust, Inc., a provider of virtualized and multi-cloud data encryption, key management, and cloud security posture management.

Today, the company offers a wide variety of digital security and credential issuance like crossing borders, making purchases, accessing e-government services or logging into corporate networks. The organization has expanded its offerings through a series of acquisitions, including:
* nCipher, a hardware security module vendor (June 2019)
* HyTrust, a provider to manage data security, current IT environments and emerging cloud infrastructures (January 2021)
* WorldReach Software, which creates seamless traveler experiences through digital transformation of the ID process for immigration and border management (April 2021)
* Onfido, which specializes in identity verification by using AI to prevent AI-driven identity fraud (April 9, 2024)

In Jan-2025, Sectigo (formerly known as Comodo CA) announced it was acquiring the public certificate business from Entrust; terms of the agreement were not disclosed.

Distrust

In June 2024, Google announced that due to long-standing issues with compliance, Entrust would be removed as a trusted Certificate Authority in the Chrome browser, and PKI certificates issued by Entrust would no longer be trusted in the browser after October 2024.
In July 2024, Mozilla announced due the long-standing issues will also remove Entrust as a trusted Certificate Authority in their Firefox Browser. This will affect all certificates granted after 30 November 2024.
{{Cite web , title=Mozilla's Decision on Entrust's Root CA Certificates used for TLS , url=https://groups.google.com/a/mozilla.org/g/dev-security-policy/c/jCvkhBjg9Yw?pli=1l , access-date=2024-07-31 , website=Google Groups , language=en

References

Software companies based in Texas
Companies based in Dallas
Computer security software companies
Corporate spin-offs
Certificate authorities
2009 mergers and acquisitions
2013 mergers and acquisitions
Software companies of the United States
Electronics companies established in 1969
Technology companies established in 1969