Virginia company Network Solutions says its deal with Verisign Inc to offer simultaneous domain name registry and digital security for customers’ Web sites will be the first of many such agreements depending upon what other competitors enter the game. Network Solutions said yesterday, It’s not an exclusive deal, but we chose to partner with Mountain View, California-based Verisign because they’re currently ahead of the market, have a product that fits the X.509 standard and real customers. As other digital identification companies crop up, Network Solutions will forge other partnerships. The agreement with Network Solutions allows users to secure their site at the same time they register their domain name. Currently when users sign up their domain name, they undergo a rigorous application and then if they want
to secure their site, they go through a strikingly similar, rigorous application. That won’t be necessary now and they’ll have one point of contact, VeriSign said yesterday. Meanwhile, VeriSign says it’s ramping up efforts to get individuals to use its digital identification service and make its name synonymous with Internet digital authentication before more competitors enter the race. VeriSign says it already has more than 10,000 Web sites secured, but now is also focusing its efforts on signing up users
for its Personal Authentication Service. It signed deals with America Online Inc and Global Network Navigator (GNN) in May to assign its Digital IDs to their members and eliminate the need for multiple passwords and user names when surfing sites. VeriSign says the deal with Network Solutions will increase its presence during a window of opportunity before competitiors
such as GTE’s CyberTrust break into the digital identification market. VeriSign expects its system of identifying users digitally to be in use before the end of the year, and says although many sites will probably allow both passwords and digital identification, it, of course, hopes the latter will quickly bring about the demise of the former.
