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 only uses the issuer Organization Name to uniquely identify the issuing CA.

CA	October 2004 Count	October 2004 %	September 2004 Count	September 2004 %	Growth %
Verisign	71,432	36.18	70,523	37.07	-2.41
Thawte	35,661	18.06	35,041	18.42	-1.95
Equifax (Geotrust)	32,777	16.60	30,575	16.07	3.29
Comodo Limited	15,080	7.64	14,313	7.52	1.51
SomeOrganization	2,988	1.51	2,833	1.49	1.62
Entrust.net	2,663	1.35	2,534	1.33	1.25
Snake Oil, Ltd	2,272	1.15	2,261	1.19	-3.18
The USERTRUST Network	2,085	1.06	1,771	0.93	13.43
Unknown	1,657	0.84	1,476	0.78	8.16
U.S. Government	1,358	0.69	1,193	0.63	9.68
FreeSSL	1,044	0.53	945	0.50	6.44
SWsoft, Inc.	968	0.49	834	0.44	11.83
Starfield Technologies, Inc.	710	0.36	518	0.27	32.06
IPS Certification Authority s.l.	630	0.32	613	0.32	-0.98
TC TrustCenter for Security in Data Networks GmbH	549	0.28	517	0.27	2.31
Plesk, Inc.	491	0.25	506	0.27	-6.51
XRamp Security Services Inc	476	0.24	411	0.22	11.59
GlobalSign nv-sa	398	0.20	371	0.20	3.36
Deutsche Telekom AG	258	0.13	252	0.13	-1.36
Plesk Inc.	236	0.12	240	0.13	-5.26
Ipswitch,Inc.	193	0.10	237	0.12	-21.54
Baltimore Technologies Japan Co.,Ltd.	182	0.09	175	0.09	0.20
ispgateway	178	0.09	169	0.09	1.48
Thawte Certification	129	0.07	127	0.07	-2.13
Root CA	126	0.06	110	0.06	10.36
TDC	124	0.06	97	0.05	23.17
Kubota Systems Inc.	121	0.06	121	0.06	-3.65
IceWarp Software	118	0.06	100	0.05	13.69
GTE Corporation	117	0.06	102	0.05	10.52
Equifax Secure Inc	112	0.06	111	0.06	-2.78
Apache HTTP Server	95	0.05	108	0.06	-15.25
Positive Software	90	0.05	77	0.04	12.62
Digital Signature Trust Co.	89	0.05	90	0.05	-4.72
Akamai	85	0.04	73	0.04	12.19
Internet Widgits Pty Ltd	80	0.04	71	0.04	8.56
NetLock Halozatbiztonsagi Kft.	78	0.04	81	0.04	-7.22
DigiCert Inc.	67	0.03	37	0.02	74.47
XYZ Corporation	63	0.03	63	0.03	-3.65
Your Name Webhosting	61	0.03	53	0.03	10.89
United Network Communications Co., Ltd.	60	0.03	60	0.03	-3.65
Unizeto Sp. z o.o.	58	0.03	53	0.03	5.44
CsideNet	54	0.03	54	0.03	-3.65
Advanced Extranet Server	54	0.03	45	0.02	15.62
ICS_TREE	51	0.03	48	0.03	2.37
OCC	50	0.03	49	0.03	-1.68
Azero	47	0.02	48	0.03	-5.66
TAIWAN-CA.COM Inc.	46	0.02	52	0.03	-14.77
WebMoney Transfer	45	0.02	45	0.02	-3.65
Webmin Software	42	0.02	38	0.02	6.49
KICA	41	0.02	39	0.02	1.29
University of Florida	39	0.02	39	0.02	-3.65
Sun Microsystems Inc	39	0.02	36	0.02	4.38
SCNC	39	0.02	39	0.02	-3.65
Sun Cobalt	38	0.02	36	0.02	1.70
Stunnel Developers Ltd	38	0.02	32	0.02	14.42
MULTICERT-CA	38	0.02	37	0.02	-1.05
Japan Certification Services, Inc.	36	0.02	32	0.02	8.39
CETI	36	0.02	38	0.02	-8.72
Hurricane Electric Internet Services	35	0.02	34	0.02	-0.82
CNRS	35	0.02	33	0.02	2.19
Stalker Software, Inc.	34	0.02	30	0.02	9.20
RM	32	0.02	32	0.02	-3.65
Temp Certificate!	30	0.02	33	0.02	-12.41
NeoNova B.V.	30	0.02	30	0.02	-3.65
ICP-Brasil	30	0.02	30	0.02	-3.65
Technische Universitaet Chemnitz	29	0.01	0	0.00	N/A
Massachusetts Institute of Technology	29	0.01	23	0.01	21.48
FNMT	29	0.01	25	0.01	11.77
Carnegie Mellon University	29	0.01	27	0.01	3.49
pair Networks	28	0.01	26	0.01	3.76
domainsofnote.com	28	0.01	26	0.01	3.76
UniCERT Brasil Certificadora	28	0.01	27	0.01	-0.08
PVT a.s.	28	0.01	26	0.01	3.76
community musician	27	0.01	0	0.00	N/A
My Company Ltd	27	0.01	25	0.01	4.06
Audkenni hf.	27	0.01	26	0.01	0.06
cv. Candi Internet	26	0.01	26	0.01	-3.65
University of Maryland	26	0.01	23	0.01	8.92
Franke & Partner	26	0.01	26	0.01	-3.65
CRU	26	0.01	20	0.01	25.25
University of Helsinki	24	0.01	21	0.01	10.11
Pro Futuro S.A.	24	0.01	22	0.01	5.11
Ensim Corporation	24	0.01	24	0.01	-3.65
CFC	24	0.01	23	0.01	0.54
Advantagecom Networks, Inc.	24	0.01	22	0.01	5.11
beTRUSTed	23	0.01	22	0.01	0.73
Postecom s.p.a.	23	0.01	23	0.01	-3.65
Hongkong Post	23	0.01	22	0.01	0.73
Etisalat	23	0.01	24	0.01	-7.66
Cardiff Schools	23	0.01	22	0.01	0.73
Aaex Corp.	23	0.01	22	0.01	0.73
Your Organization	22	0.01	20	0.01	5.98
ORACLE DEMO CA	21	0.01	19	0.01	6.49
NTT Communications Corporation	21	0.01	0	0.00	N/A
DFN-CERT Services GmbH	21	0.01	21	0.01	-3.65
SuSE Linux Web Server	20	0.01	0	0.00	N/A
ROOT	20	0.01	22	0.01	-12.41
FAS	20	0.01	20	0.01	-3.65
CESNET	20	0.01	0	0.00	N/A
Brno University of Technology	20	0.01	0	0.00	N/A

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.