DigiCert was founded by Ken Bretschneider in 2003.[2][3] Bretschneider served as CEO and chairman of the board until 2012 when he was appointed Executive chairman and Nicholas Hales became CEO.[4] In 2016, the company named John Merrill CEO,[5] who left the company in 2022.[6]
In 2007, DigiCert partnered with Microsoft to develop the industry's first multi-domain (SAN) certificate.[8][2]
In 2015, DigiCert acquired the Cyber Trust Enterprise SSL business from Verizon Enterprise Solutions, becoming the world's second-largest certificate authority for high-assurance or extended validation (EV) TLS/SSL certificates.[9]
On August 28, 2015, private equity firm Thoma Bravo acquired a majority stake in DigiCert, with TA Associates holding a minority share.[10]
In 2017, DigiCert acquired the TLS/SSL and PKI businesses from Symantec, including brands Geo Trust, Rapid SSL (part of Geo Trust), Thawte and Verisign[11] The acquisition resulted from questions first raised in 2015 by web browsers Google and Mozilla about the authenticity of certificates issued by Symantec, which represented one-third of all TLS/SSL certificates on the web.[12][13] In September 2017, Google and Mozilla announced they would "reduce, and ultimately remove, trust in Symantec's Root Keys in order to uphold user's security and privacy when browsing the web."
The final distrust deadline for certificates chaining to Symantec roots was set for October 2018.[14] Symantec agreed to transfer its certificate business to its top TLS/SSL competitor, DigiCert, whose roots were trusted by browsers.[15] In December 2017, DigiCert began issuing free replacements for all distrusted certificates from Symantec, Geo Trust, Rapid SSL, Thawte, and VeriSign. By Oct. 2018, the company had revalidated more than 550,000 organizational identities and issued more than 5 million replacement certificates for affected customers.[16]
In 2018, DigiCert acquired QuoVadis, a trust service provider (TSP) headquartered in Switzerland offering qualified digital certificates, PKI services, and Primo Sign electronic signature software.[17] Qualified digital certificates from QuoVadis (now backed by DigiCert) comply with EIDAS, a set of EU standards for electronic transactions requiring legal proof of authentication. The EU Payment Services Directive mandated that banks and other financial institutions operating in Europe begin using qualified digital certificates by Jun. 2019. According to DigiCert, "the QuoVadis acquisition aligns with the company's vision of providing globally dispersed and robust PKI-based solutions with local support."[18]
In 2019, the company announced a new R&D division called DigiCert Labs, "an initiative dedicated to researching and developing innovative approaches to security challenges."[19] DigiCert Labs will collaborate with other enterprise labs – including Microsoft Research, Utimaco, ISARA, and Gemalto – and make grants to universities for the study of topics related to authentication, data integrity, encryption and identity. Initial research projects will focus on post-quantum cryptography and machine learning.[20] In 2019, DigiCert also launched the first post-quantum computing tool kit.[21]
In 2019, Clearlake Capital Group, L.P., a leading private investment firm, and TA Associates, an existing investor, reached an agreement to make a strategic growth investment in DigiCert. As part of the transaction, Clearlake, and TA Associates become equal partners in the company.[22][23]
In January 2022, DigiCert acquired IoT security company Mocana.[24] In June 2022, the company acquired DNS Made Easy, a DNS services provider.[25]
On October 19, 2022, DigiCert named Dr. Amit Sinha as CEO and board member.[6] Amit had previously led technology and innovation at the cloud security company Zscaler the previous 12 years.
Industry Involvement
DigiCert is involved in industry and regulatory groups and projects,[26][27][28] such as:
DigiCert Inc. is not related to Digicert Sdn. Bhd, a Malaysian-based certification authority that issues certificates with weak keys and had its trust revoked by web browsers.[40][41][42]
In 2019, Google security researcher Scott Helme found approximately a million dollars worth of extended verification certificates that needed to be revoked due to faulty data, a significant portion of which were DigiCert certificates.[43]
In 2022, DigiCert was condemned by Scott Helme for pushing[44]QWAC scheme of certificate similar to EV certificates that undermined trust in certificates.[45][46][47]
^Microsoft Security Advisory (2641690) "DigiCert Sdn. Bhd is not affiliated with the corporation DigiCert, Inc., which is a member of the Microsoft Root Certificate Program."
