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GlobalSign is a
certificate authority In cryptography, a certificate authority or certification authority (CA) is an entity that stores, signs, and issues digital certificates. A digital certificate certifies the ownership of a public key by the named subject of the certificate. Thi ...
and a provider of internet identity and security products. As of January 2015, Globalsign was the 4th largest certificate authority in the world, according to
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.


History

GlobalSign was founded in Belgium in 1996 and acquired in 2007 by GMO group in Japan (formerly
GeoTrust 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 L ...
Japan). In September 2011, as a precaution, GlobalSign suspended issuing authentication certificates temporarily after an anonymous hacker going by the name "ComodoHacker" claimed to have compromised their servers, as well as those of other certificate authorities. The company took the claim seriously enough to halt the signing/issuing of new certificates while investigating the claims; it resumed issuing certificates a week later. Dutch security company Fox-IT was contracted to analyze the breach and GlobalSign released a security incident report. On December 13, 2011 GlobalSign released its final report on the incident. The report concluded that while GlobalSign's own web server was breached and the certificate of this server was stolen, due to the air gap separating this web server from the certificate-issuing machine (the one holding the company's
root certificate In cryptography and computer security, a root certificate is a public key certificate that identifies a root certificate authority (CA). Root certificates are self-signed (and it is possible for a certificate to have multiple trust paths, say if ...
), there was no evidence of any rogue certificates issued or any customer data exposed, thus the remedial actions were limited to cancelling their own web server's certificate and patching its software.
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's Chester Wisniewski summarized the report and GlobalSign's response to the incident on his blog and concluded "Not only is the report thorough and convincing, but it appears that GlobalSign took every action, exactly as they should have, both during and after the incident." As of January 2015, Globalsign was the 4th largest certificate authority in the world according to the
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survey. GlobalSign was the first CA to improve revocation checking for HTTPS pages through the use of a CDN, and the company was also the first to offer IPv6 compliant revocation services ("CRL"). In 2018, GlobalSign became a Qualified Trust Service Provider (QTSP) under the eIDAS regulation in both the European Union and the United Kingdom. In 2021, after the UK left the EU, GlobalSign was approved as the UK's first QTSP.


Services

GlobalSign's services include managed PKI platform, S/MIME certification, TLS certificates, and a cloud-based certificate manager that integrates with Microsoft's AD and user account certifications. The company also provides certificates to authenticate IoT to address authentication needs in the Internet of Everything (IoE) market and to identity management as a cloud-based service. Its PKI services can scale based on the velocity, variety, and volume of IOT platforms, and can manage the identities of millions of devices. In November 2012, GlobalSign launched an online service that allows website administrators to confirm that they have correctly configured TLS across their websites and receive actionable guidance on how to remediate any faulty or exploitable TLS configurations. The company has offices in the US, Europe and throughout Asia. In 2012, GlobalSign released its free SSL Configuration Checker. This tool lets websites check the effectiveness of their TLS configuration and provides remediation steps for websites that want to improve. In 2013, the company introduced its Auto Enrollment Gateway solution (AEG). Using AEG, companies can automate PKI management, certificate provisioning and deployment. The platform integrates with Windows Active Directory. In 2018, GlobalSign released its IoT Identity Platform. It uses PKI as its identity mechanism and is used in industries including manufacturing, agriculture, smart grid, payments, IoT gateways, and healthcare. One of the features of the platform is IoT Edge Enroll, which companies use to provision and manage the PKI-based identities. Edge Enroll provides device Registration Authority (RA), certificate lifecycle management and other support services. The platform also includes IoT CA Direct and IoT CA Connect. In May 2022, the latest version of the company's AEG platform was released. It automatically configures S/MIME certificates in Outlook for Windows using GlobalSign's cross-platform agent, XPA. XPA sets policies, and automatically enrolls, provisions, and installs certificates.


Acquisition

In 2014 GlobalSign acquired Helsinki-based Ubisecure Solutions, Inc., a privately held identity and access management (IAM) software developer. Ubisecure was spun out of GlobalSign in 2016.


Industry Affiliations

* Certificate Authority/Browser Forum (CA/B Forum): GlobalSign is a founding member of the CA/B Forum, which was established in 2013. They are actively involved with the organization's S/MIME and server certificate working groups. * Microsoft Intelligent Security Association (MISA): GlobalSign has been a member of MISA since 2019. * Cloud Signature Consortium: GlobalSign joined the consortium in 2018. * Certificate Authority Security Council (CASC) - joined in 2013. * Adobe Cloud Signature Partner Program


See also

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Advanced electronic signature An advanced electronic signature (AES or AdES) is an electronic signature that has met the requirements set forth under EU Regulation No 910/2014 ( eIDAS-regulation) on electronic identification and trust services for electronic transactions in t ...
*
Certificate authority In cryptography, a certificate authority or certification authority (CA) is an entity that stores, signs, and issues digital certificates. A digital certificate certifies the ownership of a public key by the named subject of the certificate. Thi ...
*
Certificate signing request In public key infrastructure (PKI) systems, a certificate signing request (CSR or certification request) is a message sent from an applicant to a certificate authority of the public key infrastructure (PKI) in order to apply for a digital identity ...
*
Code signing Code signing is the process of digitally signing executables and scripts to confirm the software author and guarantee that the code has not been altered or corrupted since it was signed. The process employs the use of a cryptographic hash to va ...
*
Cryptography Cryptography, or cryptology (from "hidden, secret"; and ''graphein'', "to write", or ''-logy, -logia'', "study", respectively), is the practice and study of techniques for secure communication in the presence of Adversary (cryptography), ...
* Digital Signature *
Domain-validated certificate A domain validated certificate (DV) is an X.509 public key certificate typically used for Transport Layer Security (TLS) where the domain name of the applicant is validated by proving some control over a DNS domain. Domain validated certificates ...
*
eIDAS The eIDAS Regulation (for "electronic IDentification, Authentication and trust Services") is an regulation (European Union), EU regulation with the stated purpose of governing "electronic identification and trust service provider, trust service ...
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Electronic signature An electronic signature, or e-signature, is data that is logically associated with other data and which is used by the signatory to sign the associated data. This type of signature has the same legal standing as a handwritten signature as long as ...
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Email encryption Email encryption is encryption of email messages to protect the content from being read by entities other than the intended recipients. Email encryption may also include authentication. Email is prone to the disclosure of information. Although man ...
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Extended Validation Certificate An Extended Validation (EV) Certificate is a certificate conforming to X.509 that proves the legal entity of the owner and is signed by a certificate authority key that can issue EV certificates. EV certificates can be used in the same manner as ...
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HTTPS Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS) is an extension of the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP). It uses encryption for secure communication over a computer network, and is widely used on the Internet. In HTTPS, the communication protoc ...
* Organization Validation Certificate *
Provable security Provable security refers to any type or level of computer security that can be proved. It is used in different ways by different fields. Usually, this refers to mathematical proofs, which are common in cryptography. In such a proof, the capabilit ...
*
Public key certificate In cryptography, a public key certificate, also known as a digital certificate or identity certificate, is an electronic document used to prove the validity of a Key authentication, public key. The certificate includes the public key and informati ...
*
Public key infrastructure A public key infrastructure (PKI) is a set of roles, policies, hardware, software and procedures needed to create, manage, distribute, use, store and revoke digital certificates and manage public-key encryption. The purpose of a PKI is to fac ...
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Qualified electronic signature A qualified electronic signature is an electronic signature that is compliant with EU Regulation No 910/2014 (eIDAS Regulation) for electronic transactions within the internal European market. It enables to verify the authorship of a declaration i ...
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Root certificate In cryptography and computer security, a root certificate is a public key certificate that identifies a root certificate authority (CA). Root certificates are self-signed (and it is possible for a certificate to have multiple trust paths, say if ...
*
S/MIME S/MIME (Secure/Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions) is a standard for public-key encryption and signing of MIME data. S/MIME is on an IETF standards track and defined in a number of documents, most importantly . It was originally developed by ...
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Secure Sockets Layer Transport Layer Security (TLS) is a cryptographic protocol designed to provide communications security over a computer network, such as the Internet. The protocol is widely used in applications such as email, instant messaging, and voice over IP, ...
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Self-signed certificate In cryptography and computer security, self-signed certificates are public key certificates that are not issued by a certificate authority (CA). These self-signed certificates are easy to make and do not cost money. However, they do not provide an ...
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Transport Layer Security Transport Layer Security (TLS) is a cryptographic protocol designed to provide communications security over a computer network, such as the Internet. The protocol is widely used in applications such as email, instant messaging, and voice over ...
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Web of trust In cryptography, a web of trust is a concept used in PGP, GnuPG, and other OpenPGP-compatible systems to establish the authenticity of the binding between a public key and its owner. Its decentralized trust model is an alternative to the ...
*
x.509 In cryptography, X.509 is an International Telecommunication Union (ITU) standard defining the format of public key certificates. X.509 certificates are used in many Internet protocols, including TLS/SSL, which is the basis for HTTPS, the secure ...


Sources and references

{{Reflist Certificate authorities Internet of things Internet security