GlobalSign

GlobalSign is one of the longest-operating public Certificate Authorities in the world, tracing its roots to Belgium in 1996 and now operating as part of Japan’s GMO Internet Group following GMO’s 2006 acquisition. Its core business is issuing and managing the digital certificates that underpin TLS/SSL encryption, code signing, document signing, and increasingly machine and IoT device identity — the cryptographic trust infrastructure that browsers, servers, and connected devices rely on to verify identity and encrypt traffic.

As the industry has shortened maximum TLS certificate lifespans (a trend driven by browser and CA/Browser Forum policy), certificate lifecycle management has become a bigger operational burden for enterprises, and GlobalSign has focused recent product investment there: it launched LifeCycleX, an automated certificate management tool, and TLS Connect, aimed at bringing that same automation down to small and medium businesses that previously had to track certificate renewals manually. It also introduced Verified Mark Certificates for email sender authentication and brand trust, extending its identity business beyond web certificates into email.

Operating primarily out of Portsmouth, New Hampshire in the U.S. alongside offices across Europe and Asia, GlobalSign holds all five major ISO certifications relevant to a Certificate Authority, including a 2025 ISO 14001 addition — a notable operational-maturity signal, since ISO certifications require independent third-party audit rather than self-attestation. Its recognition includes a 2025 Fortress Cybersecurity Award for cryptography and a Top InfoSec Innovator Award for PKI. As an established CA, GlobalSign’s business is inherently less about disruptive novelty and more about the trust, uptime, and compliance rigor that certificate issuance demands.