By Michael Mahoney E-Commerce Times
08/20/01 5:50 PM PT
By offering up to $5,000 of NetSure warranty protection, VeriSign's new security
service may reduce insurance costs for small businesses, a Gartner analyst said.
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Web infrastructure services provider VeriSign said
Monday it is offering a new Shared Hosting Security Service
aimed at helping small and mid-size businesses (SMBs) receive
the kind of e-commerce security previously
reserved for much larger companies.
The new offering will provide customers of SMB sites
with a VeriSign (Nasdaq: VRSN) seal that authenticates its Web address and
the customer's Internet service provider (ISP) encryption. The security services will be
marketed to the SMBs through ISPs and Web hosting companies
such as EarthLink, Ensim Corporation and ezWare Systems.
"It's kind of gluing together the pieces they already had and tying in the
seal -- but the key issue is: Are they going to invest in the advertising to
make this seal any more significant than the other seals out there?" Gartner
analyst John Pescatore told the E-Commerce Times. "Until you make the seal
mean something to a consumer, what's the point?"
Numbers Game
Dun & Bradstreet will be providing the business authentication service using
its database of over 64 million registered companies. Businesses receive a
DUNS authentication number upon being registered with Dun & Bradstreet.
When a customer clicks on a VeriSign SMB site, VeriSign verifies that the
SMB name and Web address have been authenticated by Dun & Bradstreet and
that they have the right to use the ISPs or Web Host's SSL encryption, the
company said.
Tell Me More
However, Pescatore said that while the D&B aspect of the service is the
only "unique" service being offered by VeriSign in this package, it also
does not tell consumers that much.
"Really all [the DUNS number] is saying is that this is a legitimate
company," Pescatore said. "Guys setting up sites to hack credit cards don't
have these numbers. It doesn't say whether credit (of the business) is
good, or whether [the business] is trying to sell crack to teenagers.
Whether it's a good or bad company, you still have no idea."
Virtual Security
Pescatore said that what VeriSign's new service does do for small and
mid-size businesses is reduce the insurance costs for these companies by
offering up to US$5,000 of NetSure warranty protection for their sites.
According to VeriSign, the new service also helps SMBs protect consumers
from the security breaches that can result when sites are part of a virtual
server or "shared hosting" architecture. According to Pescatore, the risk of
shared hosting is that if one of the sites on a server is compromised, it
could impact all sites on the server.
"[The new service] will certify that the SMB's virtual server has been
configured securely, that customer data is stored in hardware rather than in
software memory," Pescatore said.
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