Feb 26, 2004 : VeriSign, Microsoft Team For Security

📅 February 26, 2004 - VeriSign (verisign.com) announced on Wednesday that it has entered into a partnership with Microsoft (microsoft.com) to deliver authentication services built on the Microsoft Windows Server 2003 platform. The company said the services will decrease the cost and complexity of deploying authentication services across the enterprise. VeriSign introduced the technology, which will go into beta in April and general availability in summer 2004, as part of chairman and CEO Stratton Sclavos' keynote address at RSA 2004, an information security event.

"By leveraging existing standards in an open architecture framework, this solution allows customers to deploy a variety of strong credential options utilizing their existing Microsoft infrastructure," says Judy Lin, executive vice president and general manager of security services at VeriSign. "VeriSign's highly scalable strong authentication service, combined with Microsoft Windows 2003 components, takes advantage of both companies' strengths to deliver a service that is highly scalable and flexible, yet easy and affordable to deploy."
According to VeriSign, the authentication service uses and extends Microsoft protocols licensed as part of a strategic partnership announced in June 2003. This allows the provisioning of desktop public key infrastructure credentials such as One Time Password (OTP) tokens, PKI tokens, smart cards, and desktop PKI, VeriSign says. The credentials can be used with various built-in Microsoft applications.
"Customers have told us that they need integrated solutions for enabling strong authentication in Windows environments," says Mike Nash, vice president of the security business and technology unit at Microsoft Corporation. "We are pleased to work with VeriSign to help customers more securely manage user and device identities within and across enterprises."