Domain Names of the World

VeriSign Expands Project Titan to Strengthen Internet Infrastructure with New Security Upgrades

VeriSign, Inc. (NASDAQ: VRSN), the leading provider of Internet infrastructure for the networked world, announced an expansion of its Project Titan initiative to include additional security upgrades aimed at strengthening its global Internet infrastructure.

When it initially unveiled Project Titan in February 2007, VeriSign announced plans to increase capacity of the .com and .net Domain Name Systems (DNS) by 10 times by 2010, and the development of new proprietary technologies and processes. Now, VeriSign is announcing the deployment of additional proprietary security upgrades and monitoring tools to identify, track and isolate malicious Internet traffic generated from cyber attacks.

“VeriSign is working to stay ahead of the constantly changing demands on its Internet infrastructure and threats to its security,” said Ken Silva, chief technology officer at VeriSign. “The first stage of Project Titan was focused on the speed of the Internet and range of our infrastructure. This next stage will focus on ensuring that the level of security exceeds demands, such as new attacks coming from wireless devices, to keep the infrastructure stable and operational.”

VeriSign focuses on Internet security and stability because of the critical role the Internet plays in commerce, communications and government operations. According to an International Chamber of Commerce study released this month, a survey of over 1,000 economic experts from 90 countries said that a one-day Internet blackout would mean that "businesses would suffer major losses and costly damage which would have huge and lasting effects."

In the last year, the Internet has experienced new and evermore complex forms of cyber attacks and disruptions. For example, government servers in Estonia came under fierce attack last summer, effectively crippling Web site operations there. And in February, an effort by a Pakistani telecom provider to block YouTube.com in that country effectively disrupted access for many global users to the popular site.

According to the "Internet Security Outlook Report" issued by CA Inc., social networks and Web 2.0 services and sites are increasingly becoming the targets for cyber attacks. A Trojan horse on the iPhone is the latest example of how hand-held devices are increasingly a target. The U.S. Government last week said that "real and growing" threats to computer networks and the infrastructure were the focus of the recent “Cyber Storm II” simulated cyber-security exercises involving government agencies, private companies and security experts to test response to threats.

Building on its initiative to expand and diversify the capacity of its global Internet infrastructure by 10 times by the year 2010, VeriSign announced it would expand its existing security by:

Implementing next generation monitoring and response services. Deploying these tools, developed by VeriSign as part of the Project Titan security initiatives, will improve the ability to detect, isolate, and stop security threats to protect the .com and .net provisioning and resolution systems. The tools are designed to assist in warding off threats at their early stages before they are able to damage and compromise networks, platforms and devices.

Implementing new security and operational protocols to better manage traffic flow and increased protection against application-type attacks. Deployment of these enhancements are intended to mitigate the risk of service disruption from attacks that use the behavior of protocols such as TCP and HTTP that consume computational resources in order to overload critical systems.

Implementing new tools to track, correlate and pinpoint security and network related events on a global basis. The ability to identify various attack vectors against the .com and .net infrastructure will assist in enabling early elimination of threats to reduce the potential for repeated incidents and threat of larger scale attacks.

Press release