Online Casinos Secured by VeriSign

1 Comment   Email   Print

While browsing through the web sites of online casinos players would have come across references to how the casino secures the financial transactions so that players can safely deposit and withdraw funds without third parties hijacking the transactions and the funds. Most of the time, this information is set out in the About Us section or in a separate Security section. The best online casinos do not expect players to simply take their word that all security systems are in place. They get the systems certified by an independent expert organization. This adds credibility to the claim in the same manner that certificates from eCOGRA or Technical Systems Testing strengthens the claim that the games are fair. The most popular and reputed organization that certifies the security of financial transactions of an online casino is VeriSign Inc. The online casinos certified by VeriSign usually display the "VeriSign Secured" logo on the home pages of their web sites.

VeriSign was founded in 1995, much the same time that the first online casinos were launched. It currently has its head quarters in California but will be shifting to Virginia in 2011. It had revenue of $1.0 billion in 2009 and an income of $197.5 million in the same year. It employs over 2,000 personnel all over the world. VeriSign is quoted on the NASDAQ. These brief statistics show what a formidable reputation VeriSign has.

VeriSign was founded as a spin-off from RSA to engage in the security certification services business. It received licenses to key cryptographic patents held by RSA and a time limited non-compete agreement. The initial mission of VeriSign was "providing trust for the Internet and Electronic Commerce through Digital Authentication services and products." Today VeriSign has more than 3 million certificates in operation for businesses as diverse as military, financial services, online casinos and retail applications, making it the largest certification authority for encryption and authentication on the Internet. VeriSign also offers a host of other Internet infrastructure services including domain name services, code signing, DDoS protection and managed DNS.

Secure Socket Layer (SSL) certification remains the core of VeriSign business. Players need to understand how VeriSign SSL encryption works because then they will feel completely at ease when engaging in financial transactions at online casinos.

When the player connects with a VeriSign certified online casino, the browser on the player’s computer requests the web server of the online casino to identify itself. The server sends the browser a copy of its VeriSign SSL certificate. The browser confirms that the SSL certificate is genuine and it informs the online casino server to proceed. Then an encryption channel is set up with a public key and a private key. The public key is used to encrypt information and the private key is used to decipher it. Using this secure channel the player and the online casino can exchange sensitive information like credit card details and payment instructions.

VeriSign constantly endeavors to upgrade and enhance the value of its products. The latest "VeriSign Trusted" seal offers advantages over the basic "VeriSign Secured" seal. The VeriSign Trusted seal appears next to the online casino link in search results on enabled browsers. This seal also means that the online casino, or any other merchant that has the seal, has passed a daily scan for malicious code.

Article Tools

 Email     Print     Digg     Del.icio.us    StumbleUpon

Comments

 Add Comment

Add Comment

More Articles