 |
Press Release |
|
|
VeriSign Completes Key Milestones in Initiative to Strengthen and Diversify Global Internet Infrastr
Company On Track to Achieve a 1,000 Percent Upgrade in Capacity of
its Critical Infrastructure by 2010
Mountain View, CA – September 24, 2007 – VeriSign, Inc. (NASDAQ:
VRSN), the leading provider of digital infrastructure for the networked
world, today announced it has completed key milestones and is on track
to expand and diversify the capacity of its global Internet infrastructure
by 10 times by the year 2010.
When VeriSign announced the Project Titan initiative
in February, it focused on expanding VeriSign’s critical infrastructure
in scale, location, and investment in new engineering, monitoring and
security systems to support the growth in Internet traffic. Since then,
VeriSign has increased its capacity to 2 trillion DNS queries a day,
continued to diversify its infrastructure globally and created new tools
and processes to better monitor and manage traffic and to implement
various system upgrades.
Project Titan is a multi-year initiative to strengthen
the infrastructure. These upgrades are vital to managing the surge in
Internet interactions and protecting against cyber attacks that are
growing in both scale and sophistication.
“If the Internet infrastructure is not continually
fortified and strengthened, then we run the risk that it will be unable
to support the growing and dynamic needs of users, businesses and governments
that rely on that infrastructure every day for commerce, communications
and operations,” said Ken Silva, chief security officer, VeriSign. “For
the Internet to remain a trusted platform, there must be complete confidence
that it can scale to meet the demands and protect itself against attacks
by those who want to disrupt it.”
VeriSign manages the critical infrastructure that
handles registration and resolution traffic for the .com and .net systems.
In doing so, VeriSign continues to experience heavy demand, processing
a peak of more than 30 billion Domain Name System (DNS) queries per
day in the second quarter. A DNS query occurs every time an Internet
user clicks on a web site, checks email or engages a computer application
that utilizes the .com and .net infrastructures. This does not include
the vast number of computers that communicate with each other via automatically
generated DNS queries. VeriSign additionally operates the “A” and “J”
root servers, which serve as the central directory to route Internet
traffic to other top level domains.
Internet technology has transformed personal communications,
banking and finance, government process, manufacturing—indeed, the economic,
social and political life of industrialized economies. The growth of
Internet users, broadband capacity and number of Internet-enabled devices
has created an opportunity for hackers, organized criminals and even
more serious terrorists to attack our networks.
Cyber abuse—SPAM, spy ware, identity abuse, viral
attacks, and denial of service exploits—often involve hijacked PCs and
other devices, now linked through broadband connections, and the use
of that bandwidth to launch attacks on the Internet infrastructure.
A series of serious attacks in the last two years reflect how these
incidents have grown in frequency and sophistication – some 100 times
more threatening than attacks conducted just years before.
Project Titan has several components, including:
DNS query capacity and bandwidth upgrades. VeriSign has increased
its daily Domain Name System (DNS) query capacity from 400 billion queries
a day to roughly 2 trillion queries a day. VeriSign will continue to
upgrade its systems to reach a query capacity of 4 trillion queries
a day. VeriSign has also scaled its proprietary constellation of resolution
systems to increase their bandwidth from over 20 gigabits per second
(Gbps) to greater than 100 Gbps. This will be increased to more than
200 Gbps by the year 2010.
Infrastructure diversification. VeriSign is distributing its
infrastructure across the globe to improve redundancy and reduce latency.
VeriSign has added Regional Internet Resolution Sites (RIRS) in Argentina,
Bulgaria, Lithuania and South Africa and is negotiating with India,
Germany and Chile to deploy infrastructure in those countries. These
RIRS extend the .com and .net infrastructures across the world, which
diversifies the systems, increases stability and improves resolution
speed for end users. These widely distributed sites also direct region-specific
DNS traffic to certain resolution sites to enable more effective quarantining
of malicious traffic. VeriSign is now more than a quarter of the way
through its goal of deploying RIRSs in over 100 locations globally by
2010.
Expansion of existing infrastructure. VeriSign is expanding
its existing registration and resolution infrastructure to manage the
increasing demands on the .com and .net systems. VeriSign has deployed
new infrastructure facilities in Miami, New York City, Chicago, Palo
Alto and Washington, DC to upgrade its registry operations and enhance
VeriSign’s domain name resolution sites and registration capabilities.
These servers run specialized software in fault-tolerant architectures
engineered by VeriSign to manage resolution traffic and registration
transactions at ever-increasing rates.
Development of new technologies and processes. VeriSign is
developing next-generation monitoring and response services that will
help better manage .com and .net traffic and better protect the systems
against cyber threats. The monitoring systems will rapidly diagnose
Internet traffic anomalies, which often appear in advance of a cyber
attack, enabling pre-emptive action to minimize impact. VeriSign will
also implement new DNS security protocols to better protect Internet
traffic.
VeriSign’s current financial projections include the
costs associated with Project Titan.
About VeriSign
VeriSign, Inc. (NASDAQ: VRSN), operates digital infrastructure
services that enable and protect billions of interactions every day
across the world’s voice, video and data networks. Additional news and
information about the company is available at www.verisign.com.
Contacts
Media: Victoria Henry, vhenry@verisign.com
+44 20 8600 0723
Industry analysts: Katie Hammler, khammler@verisign.com,
703-948-4367
Weber Shandwick for VeriSign: Sneha Nagmoti, verisignlondon@webershandwick.com
+44 207 067 0515
Statements in this announcement other than historical
data and information constitute forward-looking statements within the
meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 and Section 21E
of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. These statements involve risks
and uncertainties that could cause VeriSign's actual results to differ
materially from those stated or implied by such forward-looking statements.
The potential risks and uncertainties include, among others, the uncertainty
of future revenue and profitability and potential fluctuations in quarterly
operating results due to such factors as the inability of VeriSign to
successfully develop and market new products and services and customer
acceptance of any new products or services, including VeriSign's Extended
Validation Secure Sockets Layer Certificates the possibility that VeriSign’s
announced new services may not result in additional customers, profits
or revenues; and increased competition and pricing pressures. More information
about potential factors that could affect the company's business and
financial results is included in VeriSign's filings with the Securities
and Exchange Commission, including in the company's Annual Report on
Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2006 and quarterly reports
on Form 10-Q. VeriSign undertakes no obligation to update any of the
forward-looking statements after the date of this press release.
# # #
©2007 VeriSign, Inc. All rights reserved. VeriSign,
the VeriSign logo, the checkmark circle, and other trademarks, service
marks, and designs are registered or unregistered trademarks of VeriSign,
Inc., and its subsidiaries in the United States and in foreign countries.
All other trademarks are property of their respective owners.
|
|
