Symantec has decided to get VeriSign’s market-leading SSL certificate business for $1.28 billion, with a map to make the technology more conventional.

The agreement, which does not necessitate investor endorsement, will see Symantec obtain its hands on a business that by now produces $400 million in proceeds yearly.

The company, famed for its Norton brand of desktop safety software, considers it can produce the SSL business, and VeriSign’s VIP user verification system, by packing and cross-selling certs with its business and customer software.

Symantec states,
“Symantec can expand the VIP ecosystem by incorporating user certificates into its Norton-branded consumer products providing a channel through which consumers can easily create secure identities that can be authenticated when they do business online,”.

The VeriSign belief check-mark that many web sites integrate into their pages to demonstrate they are encrypted will be reinstate by a Symantec mark that comprises VeriSign’s insignia.

For VeriSign, the contract means it is now concentrating approximately completely on domain names. Its two big currency cows are now the .com and .net domain registries, and it appears probably the company will ultimately require to follow other top-level domains contracts in order to develop.

Advertising SSL certificates were VeriSign’s innovative raison d’etre, the cause it was turned out of RSA Security in 1995, when the Netscape browser was becoming admired and people had just commenced business on the web.

[Via Thinq]