Report Description

This report, much like our original certs and CAs report, focuses on issuers of SSL enabling certificates found on web servers. Unlike our original report, however, this report has a couple of key differences to it:

• Reports on top 100 CAs. The original report only paid attention to the major CAs at the time the report was produced. This report lists the top 100 CAs for the month. You will find here many self-signing organizations such as universities, telecommunications firms, etc.
• Uses issuer name as identifier. Our original report only counted a certificate towards an organization if we were able to prove, by virtue of verifying the key, that the organization in question actually signed the certificate. This had a notable problem with it - we don't always have the public key of the CA. In at least one case, a CA doesn't make their public key available unless you sign a license agreement.

  This report doesn't have that problem, since it doesn't verify the signatures of the certificates it finds, it only uses the issuer Organization Name to uniquely identify the issuing CA.

CA	January 2006 Count	January 2006 %	December 2005 Count	December 2005 %	Growth %
Verisign	72,744	30.34	73,620	30.43	-0.32
Equifax (Geotrust)	45,304	18.89	45,369	18.76	0.73
Thawte	37,372	15.59	37,918	15.68	-0.58
Comodo Limited	19,541	8.15	20,408	8.44	-3.41
Starfield Technologies, Inc.	5,680	2.37	5,498	2.27	4.22
Unknown	4,056	1.69	4,038	1.67	1.33
Entrust.net	3,810	1.59	3,834	1.58	0.25
SomeOrganization	2,985	1.24	3,137	1.30	-4.01
AddTrust AB	2,239	0.93	1,596	0.66	41.52
The USERTRUST Network	2,050	0.85	2,337	0.97	-11.51
Snake Oil, Ltd	2,009	0.84	2,034	0.84	-0.36
SWsoft, Inc.	1,971	0.82	1,928	0.80	3.13
ChainedSSL	1,868	0.78	1,873	0.77	0.61
U.S. Government	1,412	0.59	1,420	0.59	0.31
XRamp Security Services Inc	1,327	0.55	1,225	0.51	9.28
DigiCert Inc.	1,099	0.46	1,036	0.43	7.01
TC TrustCenter for Security in Data Networks GmbH	751	0.31	767	0.32	-1.23
IPS Certification Authority s.l.	737	0.31	747	0.31	-0.47
Network Solutions L.L.C.	727	0.30	638	0.26	14.95
GlobalSign nv-sa	605	0.25	609	0.25	0.21
Root CA	560	0.23	533	0.22	5.99
FreeSSL	367	0.15	410	0.17	-9.70
Betrusted Japan Co.,Ltd.	358	0.15	352	0.15	2.60
Deutsche Telekom AG	294	0.12	295	0.12	0.54
Plesk, Inc.	289	0.12	298	0.12	-2.17
GTE Corporation	231	0.10	241	0.10	-3.31
ispgateway	224	0.09	227	0.09	-0.46
Ipswitch,Inc.	189	0.08	210	0.09	-9.21
Positive Software Corporation	160	0.07	113	0.05	42.84
Akamai	160	0.07	157	0.06	2.81
TDC	157	0.07	161	0.07	-1.63
Kubota Systems Inc.	154	0.06	154	0.06	0.88
Comodo Japan Inc.	154	0.06	151	0.06	2.88
Apache HTTP Server	148	0.06	151	0.06	-1.13
Positive Software	135	0.06	148	0.06	-7.98
Plesk Inc.	126	0.05	134	0.06	-5.15
Internet Widgits Pty Ltd	112	0.05	120	0.05	-5.85
Unizeto Sp. z o.o.	103	0.04	102	0.04	1.87
OCC	101	0.04	101	0.04	0.88
NetLock Halozatbiztonsagi Kft.	100	0.04	102	0.04	-1.10
Digital Signature Trust Co.	92	0.04	93	0.04	-0.21
Thawte Certification	88	0.04	92	0.04	-3.51
IceWarp Software	85	0.04	92	0.04	-6.80
GlobalSign Inc	85	0.04	73	0.03	17.46
ICS_TREE	82	0.03	83	0.03	-0.34
Firstserver, Inc.	77	0.03	80	0.03	-2.91
RM	71	0.03	68	0.03	5.33
CRU	71	0.03	69	0.03	3.80
CNRS	68	0.03	68	0.03	0.88
Equifax Secure Inc	66	0.03	67	0.03	-0.63
Trusted Secure Certificate Authority	61	0.03	57	0.02	7.96
Azero	61	0.03	62	0.03	-0.75
United Network Communications Co., Ltd.	59	0.02	59	0.02	0.88
ICP-Brasil	59	0.02	55	0.02	8.21
XYZ Corporation	58	0.02	53	0.02	10.39
NTT Communications Corporation	56	0.02	55	0.02	2.71
Japan Certification Services, Inc.	56	0.02	56	0.02	0.88
Sun Microsystems Inc	55	0.02	59	0.02	-5.96
StartCom Ltd.	53	0.02	49	0.02	9.11
MULTICERT-CA	53	0.02	52	0.02	2.82
UniCERT Brasil Certificadora	51	0.02	53	0.02	-2.93
WebMoney Transfer	50	0.02	49	0.02	2.94
My Company Ltd	49	0.02	50	0.02	-1.14
Stunnel Developers Ltd	46	0.02	53	0.02	-12.45
FNMT	44	0.02	43	0.02	3.22
Hostgator	42	0.02	40	0.02	5.92
BlueHost.Com	42	0.02	33	0.01	28.39
SCNC	41	0.02	41	0.02	0.88
DFN-CERT Services GmbH	41	0.02	41	0.02	0.88
SuSE Linux Web Server	38	0.02	38	0.02	0.88
S1 Corporation	37	0.02	35	0.01	6.64
University of Maryland	36	0.02	37	0.02	-1.85
Temp Certificate!	36	0.02	37	0.02	-1.85
Beocity	36	0.02	36	0.01	0.88
TAIWAN-CA.COM	35	0.01	29	0.01	21.75
Etisalat	34	0.01	35	0.01	-2.00
Stalker Software, Inc.	33	0.01	31	0.01	7.39
Carnegie Mellon University	33	0.01	33	0.01	0.88
CETI	32	0.01	32	0.01	0.88
Advanced Extranet Server	32	0.01	31	0.01	4.13
A-Trust Ges. f. Sicherheitssysteme im elektr. Datenverkehr GmbH	32	0.01	33	0.01	-2.18
Webmin Software	31	0.01	31	0.01	0.88
Pro Futuro S.A.	31	0.01	34	0.01	-8.02
Baltimore Technologies Japan Co.,Ltd.	31	0.01	49	0.02	-36.18
Audkenni hf.	31	0.01	32	0.01	-2.27
cv. Candi Internet	30	0.01	30	0.01	0.88
WEBMASTERS.COM	29	0.01	29	0.01	0.88
SSL	29	0.01	29	0.01	0.88
IceWarp Ltd.	29	0.01	29	0.01	0.88
domainsofnote.com	28	0.01	28	0.01	0.88
University of Helsinki	28	0.01	29	0.01	-2.60
Sonera	28	0.01	0	0.00	N/A
Prvni certifikacni autorita a.s.	28	0.01	28	0.01	0.88
University of Washington	27	0.01	27	0.01	0.88
Massachusetts Institute of Technology	27	0.01	29	0.01	-6.08
E-Telbank Sp. z o.o.	27	0.01	0	0.00	N/A
Default Web Site	27	0.01	29	0.01	-6.08
CFC	27	0.01	27	0.01	0.88
Postecom S.p.A.	26	0.01	0	0.00	N/A
IT Bureau of Hainan Province	26	0.01	26	0.01	0.88

Note: Readers are cautioned that the Growth percentages are based on a CA's market share penetration rather than the absolute number of certificates we detected. Thus, it is possible for the number of certificates to increase, while the growth is actually a negative value.