Verisign, Inc.

It's not only Julius Caesar who should take note of the Ides of March. So should every business with a dot-com address, since that was the date of the first dot-com address -- 25 years ago Monday.

On that date in 1985, a Cambridge, Mass., company named Symbolics became the first to register a dot-com domain. But the Internet at that time was still primarily a network devoted to research and academic use, and Symbolics' move didn't exactly start a land rush. By the end of the year, only five other companies had dot-com addresses, and it was nearly two years before there were a hundred.

VeriSign Inc., whose technology is key to allowing Internet users to access Web sites with names ending in ".com" and ".net," plans to spend more than $300 million over the next decade to upgrade its systems.

The upgrades will allow VeriSign's machines to handle up to 4 quadrillion requests per day from computers trying to reach those sites. That's a thousand times more lookups than the 4 trillion per day that the company can currently handle.

Microsoft is cracking down on botnets through the legal system -- and winning. The software giant launched a legal assault this week against networks of compromised computers controlled by hackers, and a federal judge in Alexandria, Va., agreed to its request to deactivate 277 infringing domain names.

With more and more people using the Web for business transactions and routinely typing in their credit-card digits on various sites, rising concerns about identity theft and other cybercrimes have put companies that provide Internet security products in the catbird seat.

While Symantec and McAfee have hitched their wagons to Microsoft, on hopes that the new Windows 7.0 operating system will drive sales of their security software, other companies' business models aren't tied to the fortunes of Redmond & Co.

Mountain View, Calif. – October 1, 2009 – In response to a growing demand for advanced security solutions among mobile device users, VeriSign, Inc. (NASDAQ: VRSN), the trusted provider of Internet infrastructure for the networked world, is putting its acclaimed VeriSign Identity Protection (VIP) strong authentication into the hands of millions more users.

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers has ended its decade-long arrangement with the U.S. Department of Commerce. The move gained applause from the European Commission, which had called for ICANN to consider a system run by the private sector.

A powerful new type of Internet attack works like a telephone tap, except operates between computers and Web sites they trust.

Hackers at the Black Hat and DefCon security conferences have revealed a serious flaw in the way Web browsers weed out untrustworthy sites and block anybody from seeing them. If a criminal infiltrates a network, he can set up a secret eavesdropping post and capture credit card numbers, passwords and other sensitive data flowing between computers on that network and sites their browsers have deemed safe.

Late last fall, Microsoft servers came under attack from a particularly vicious worm called Conficker/Downadup. The worm may have been specifically written to exploit a vulnerability that Microsoft revealed in Security Bulletin No. MS08-067.

By mid-January, cybersecurity specialists estimated that as many as nine million computers had been infected. More disturbingly, even today as many as a third of the vulnerable servers have not been properly patched.

Canadian-based Research In Motion will acquire Certicom, an Ontario-based security management company, for approximately C$131 million (US$105.7 million) or C$3.00 (US$2.42) per share.

Last week, BlackBerry maker RIM upped the ante on a C$2.10 per share buyout offer from VeriSign that Certicom announced on Jan. 23. However, the terms of the deal with VeriSign gave Certicom the option of paying C$4 million (US$3.2 million) should it decide to accept any "unsolicited superior proposal." VeriSign notified Certicom earlier this week that it would not top RIM's bid.