Article · Wikipedia archive · Last revised May 30, 2026

DigiCert

DigiCert, Inc. is an digital security company that operates as a certificate authority and provides SaaS solutions for public key infrastructure (PKI) and certificate lifecycle management. Its offerings support authentication, encryption, and identity verification for systems, software, devices, and networks.

Last revised
May 30, 2026
Read time
≈ 7 min
Length
1,714 w
Citations
45
Source
Wikipedia ↗
DigiCert, Inc.
Company type
Private
IndustryInternet security, Public key infrastructure, IoT security
Founded2003 (2003)
Headquarters
Lehi, Utah, U.S.
Number of locations
12
Area served
Worldwide
Key people
  • Amit Sinha (CEO)
  • Jason Sabin (CTO)
  • Jugnu Bhatia (CFO)
  • Dave Packer (CRO)
  • Deepika Chauhan (CPO
  • Lakshmi Hanspal (CTrO))
Number of employees
2,000+
Websitewww.digicert.com

DigiCert, Inc. is an digital security company that operates as a certificate authority and provides SaaS solutions for public key infrastructure (PKI) and certificate lifecycle management. Its offerings support authentication, encryption, and identity verification for systems, software, devices, and networks.1

History

Example of a DigiCert issued wildcard certificate for *.wikipedia.org source ↗

DigiCert was founded by Ken Bretschneider in 2003.234 In 2005, DigiCert became a founding member of the CA/Browser Forum.5678

In 2007, DigiCert and Microsoft developed the first multi-domain (SAN) certificate.9 In 2012, Nicholas Hales was named the CEO of DigiCert.6

In 2015, DigiCert acquired the CyberTrust Enterprise SSL business from Verizon Enterprise Solutions. Following the acquisition, DigiCert expanded its extended validation (EV) business.10

In August 2015, private equity firm Thoma Bravo acquired a majority stake in DigiCert, with TA Associates holding a minority share.11 In 2016, John Merrill was named CEO of DigiCert.

In 2017, DigiCert acquired the TLS/SSL and PKI businesses from Symantec, including brands GeoTrust, Rapid SSL (part of GeoTrust), Thawte and Verisign12 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.1314 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".15

The final distrust deadline for certificates chaining to Symantec roots was set for October 2018.16 Symantec agreed to transfer its certificate business to its top TLS/SSL competitor, DigiCert, whose roots were trusted by browsers.17 In December 2017, DigiCert began issuing free replacements for all distrusted certificates from Symantec, GeoTrust, RapidSSL, 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.18

In 2018, DigiCert acquired QuoVadis, a trust service provider headquartered in Switzerland offering qualified digital certificates, PKI services, and PrimoSign electronic signature software.19 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 company operates as a Qualified Trust Service Provider in Belgium, the Netherlands, and Switzerland. According to DigiCert, "the QuoVadis acquisition aligns with the company's vision of providing globally dispersed and robust PKI-based solutions with local support."202122

In 2019, the company announced a new R&D division called DigiCert Labs. 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.23 In 2019, DigiCert also launched a post-quantum computing tool kit.24

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.2526

In January 2022, DigiCert acquired IoT security company Mocana.27 In June 2022, the company acquired DNS Made Easy, a DNS services provider.2829303132

In October 2022, DigiCert named Dr. Amit Sinha as CEO and board member.33 Amit had previously led technology and innovation at the cloud-security company Zscaler the previous 12 years.

In September 2024 DigiCert acquired Vercara, which previously was Neustar Security Services.34

In July 2024, DigiCert revoked over 83,000 certificates due to failures in domain control validation (DCV), affecting approximately 0.4% of its active certificates. The scale and impact of the incident led to criticism from industry observers, who argued that it reflected broader concerns about DigiCert’s operational reliability and compliance practices.3536

In September 2025, DigiCert acquired Valimail, a provider of zero trust email authentication delivered as a service.37 DigiCert was also selected to operate the ASC X9 PKI providing PKI solutions for the financial industry.38

Acquisitions

Year Acquisition
2015 Verizon's SSL/TLS business
2017 Symantec's website security and PKI solutions, including the GeoTrust, RapidSSL, Thawte, and VeriSign brands
2019 QuoVadis (Switzerland)
2022 Mocana
2022 DNS Made Easy and Constellix
2024 Vercara
2025 Valimail

Products

DigiCert ONE is a cloud-based platform developed by DigiCert for managing public key infrastructure (PKI), digital certificates, and related trust services. The platform is used for certificate issuance, automation, and lifecycle management across enterprise applications, networks, and connected devices.39

Components of the platform include:

  • DigiCert CertCentral, a certificate management portal for requesting, issuing, and managing publicly trusted TLS/SSL certificates.39
  • Trust Lifecycle Manager, a certificate lifecycle management and PKI administration tool for public and private certificate environments.40
  • Content Trust Manager, a service for digitally signing and verifying documents and media files using cryptographic signatures and provenance metadata.41
  • DigiCert Private CA, a software-as-a-service and on-premises platform for internal PKI certificate issuance and identity management.
  • Device Trust Manager, a platform for managing device identities and certificate lifecycles for connected devices.42
  • Software Trust Manager, a platform for managing code signing certificates and related software integrity processes.43
  • UltraDNS, an authoritative DNS service used for domain resolution and traffic management.

DigiCert ONE combines certificate management, authentication, encryption, and related trust functions within a single administrative platform.

References

References

  1. Harvey, Tom (August 3, 2017). "Utah-Based Digicert Paying Nearly $1 Billion to Acquire Symantec's Website Security Offerings". Salt Lake Tribune. Archived from the original on August 11, 2017.
  2. Metz, Rachel (December 15, 2015). "Inside the First VR Theme Park". MIT Technology Review. Archived from the original on August 12, 2020.
  3. Barnes, Brooks (February 19, 2017). "With New Invention, Virtual Reality's Potential for Magic Gets Real". The New York Times. Archived from the original on February 20, 2017.
  4. "Utah's DigiCert reorganizes its management". Salt Lake Tribune. April 17, 2012. Archived from the original on November 7, 2023.
  5. "Members". CAB Forum. August 31, 2013. Retrieved January 27, 2023.
  6. "Digicert Promotes Their COO, LogLogic is Acquire, and More Company News". SC World. July 2, 2012.
  7. "Utah's DigiCert Reorganizes Its Management". The Salt Lake Tribune. April 17, 2012. Archived from the original on August 3, 2017.
  8. “DigiCert names CEO”. Daily Herald. Retrieved 2019-02-28.
  9. "DigiCert Fact Sheet" (PDF). digicert.com.
  10. “DigiCert Acquires Verizon Enterprise SSL Business”. DigiCert.com. Retrieved 2019-03-01.
  11. Kerner, Sean Michael (August 28, 2015). "Thoma Bravo Invests in Security Firm DigiCert". eWeek.
  12. Raymond, Art (August 3, 2017). "Lehi's DigiCert swallows web security competitor in $1 billion deal". Deseret News. Archived from the original on August 4, 2017. Retrieved May 21, 2020.
  13. Sharwood, Simon (August 3, 2017). "Symantec offloads its certs and web security biz to DigiCert". The Register. Archived from the original on August 12, 2020.
  14. Constantin, Lucian (March 24, 2017). "To punish Symantec, Google may distrust a third of the web's SSL certificates". PC World. Archived from the original on October 22, 2021.
  15. Duckett, Chris (August 2, 2017). "Symantec to Get Almost $1B Plus Stock in Certificate Business Sale". ZDNet. Archived from the original on August 4, 2017.
  16. “Chrome’s Plan to Distrust Symantec Certificates”. Google. Retrieved 2019-03-05.
  17. "DigiCert Closes Acquisition of Symantec's Website SSL Security Unit". eWeek. Retrieved 2019-03-11.
  18. "DigiCert works with its customers and partners to successfully move past Google's distrust of Symantec TLS certificates". PR Newswire (Press release). Retrieved March 1, 2019.
  19. Kent, Jonathan (October 31, 2018). "QuoVadis to be sold to US firm DigiCert". www.royalgazette.com. Retrieved August 24, 2022.
  20. Barker, Sara. “DigiCert’s QuoVadis acquisition extends PKI expertise in Europe”. SecurityBrief EMEA. Retrieved 2019-03-05.
  21. Aas, Josh; Barnes, Richard; Case, Benton; Durumeric, Zakir; Eckersley, Peter; Flores-López, Alan; Halderman, J. Alex; Hoffman-Andrews, Jacob; Kasten, James; Rescorla, Eric; Schoen, Seth; Warren, Brad (November 6, 2019). "Let's Encrypt: An Automated Certificate Authority to Encrypt the Entire Web" (PDF). Proceedings of the 2019 ACM SIGSAC Conference on Computer and Communications Security. Association for Computing Machinery. pp. 2473–2487. doi:10.1145/3319535.3363192. ISBN 978-1-4503-6747-9.
  22. Helme, Scott (September 11, 2019). "Extended Validation not so... extended? How I revoked $1,000,000 worth of EV certificates!". Archived from the original on September 11, 2019. Retrieved March 24, 2022.
  23. Barker, Sara. “DigiCert Labs to research postquantum cryptography and ML”. SecurityBrief EMEA. Retrieved 2019-02-28.
  24. "DigiCert Announces Post-Quantum Computing Tool Kit". www.digicert.com. Retrieved January 27, 2023.
  25. "News". TA Associates. Retrieved July 16, 2019.
  26. "Clearlake Capital Group and TA Associates to Make a Strategic Growth Investment in DigiCert". Clearlake Capital. July 9, 2019. Retrieved July 16, 2019.
  27. Sawers, Paul (January 13, 2022). "DigiCert acquires Mocana to bolster IoT security". VentureBeat. Retrieved January 27, 2022.
  28. Graham, Patrick (June 9, 2022). "DigiCert Acquires DNS Made Easy". Mergers & Acquisitions. Archived from the original on September 18, 2024. Retrieved August 24, 2022.
  29. Helme, Scott (January 4, 2022). "If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and QWACs like a duck, then it's probably an EV Certificate". Retrieved March 24, 2022.
  30. "Mozilla and the EFF publish letter about the danger of Article 45.2". blog.mozilla.org. Retrieved March 24, 2022.
  31. "Experts urge EU not to force insecure certificates in web browsers". BleepingComputer. Retrieved March 24, 2022.
  32. Callas, Alexis Hancock and Jon (February 9, 2022). "What the Duck? Why an EU Proposal to Require "QWACs" Will Hurt Internet Security". Electronic Frontier Foundation. Retrieved March 24, 2022.
  33. "DigiCert Appoints Industry Veteran Amit Sinha as Chief Executive Officer" (Press release). DigiCert / PR Newswire. October 19, 2022. Archived from the original on September 18, 2024.
  34. "DigiCert Completes Acquisition of Vercara Acquisition furthers DigiCert's position as a leader in digital trust". goldengatecap.com. September 23, 2024. Retrieved February 17, 2026.
  35. "DigiCert Revokes 83,000+ Certificates for Failed DCV". SANS NewsBites. July 2024. Retrieved July 28, 2025.
  36. Lyons, Jessica (July 31, 2024). "DigiCert gives unlucky folks 24 hours to replace doomed certificates after code blunder". The Register. Retrieved July 28, 2025.
  37. "DigiCert Acquires Valimail, a Global Leader in Zero Trust Email Authentication Security". September 16, 2025. Retrieved December 30, 2025.
  38. "DigiCert Selected by ASC X9 to Provide Managed PKI Service Infrastructure for Financial Services Industry". February 27, 2025. Retrieved December 30, 2025.
  39. "DigiCert and Citrix NetScaler automate certificate management across hybrid environments". VM Virtual Machine.
  40. "The Total Economic Impact of DigiCert". Security Journal Americas.
  41. "DigiCert launches content verification AI media tool". Cyber Technology Insights.
  42. "DigiCert expands device trust capabilities". Associated Press.
  43. "DigiCert releases TrustCore SDK to support quantum resilience". IoT Insider.
External links