Witness the company's effort this week to make it easier for enterprise managers to use digital certificates to secure their VPNs. VeriSign has collaborated with Check Point and Nortel to make VeriSign's digital certificates easy to distribute to VPN users. By cooperating with the two vendors, VeriSign has made it so simple to install digital certificate software that end users can perform the installation themselves.
Administrators can now avoid the logistics of installing the software for end users.
In addition, VeriSign runs a certificate authority to verify users who want to establish encrypted VPN tunnels across the Internet. VeriSign says it went after Check Point and Nortel first because they are big sellers of VPN gear. VeriSign says it will announce similar arrangements with other VPN equipment makers later this year. This type of service could mean the difference between an enterprise choosing a VPN secured by certificates and one that is not because the enterprise lacks the in-house resources to distribute software. It certainly will make such distribution faster.