Security Provider GlobalSign Appoints New Management Team

GlobalSign worldwide relaunch brings together the management team and staff from companies formally trading as GeoTrust Europe, RapidSSL.com and GeoTrust Japan.

July 9, 2007; 07:32 AM

LONDON, UK – GlobalSign (www.globalsign.com), one of the longest established Certification Authorities (CA) and specialists in SSL security, today announced a wholly new Management Team as part of its major worldwide re-launch campaign. The team includes a number of industry veterans previously responsible for launching or operating SSL divisions of nearly all the major Certification Authorities, and represents the first time that such worldwide experience has been brought together to focus on a single Certification Authority.

The opportunity to bring together this calibre of skill set and experience was instigated by the acquisition of US based GeoTrust Inc by VeriSign in September 2006. The acquisition did not include the GMO Internet Inc (GMO) owned companies trading as GeoTrust Europe, RapidSSL.com and GeoTrust Japan and as a result, the management teams, (as well as the sales, support and engineering staff) were no longer associated with the GeoTrust brand.

In October 2006, this team set about acquiring GlobalSign, a competing Certification Authority to VeriSign, its technology, customer base and credible name, and bringing it into the GMO set of companies. This experienced team now has a newly refocused, re-launched and rebranded organisation, with innovative world leading technology and all the staff and technical infrastructure required to refocus the GlobalSign organisation.

Together with the original GlobalSign staff, the new management team brought with it a host of SSL industry veterans, sales, support and engineering staff with experience spanning all the main players in SSL and digital certificate technology, including a combined experience of managing over 4,000 SSL resellers. The new management team is made up of:

o CEO Geotrust Japan

o Co-founder & Managing Director GeoTrust Europe, RapidSSL

o Managing Director Comodo

o Director of Managed Identities, CyberTrust / General Manager GlobalSign NV

o Co-Founder & Marketing Director GeoTrust Europe, Rapid SSL

o Head of Marketing Comodo

o Sales Director GeoTrust Europe

o Sales Director Comodo

o CFO GeoTrust Japan

o Business Development Director, GeoTrust Europe

o Director of Technical marketing Comodo

"The new management team’s understanding of the market coupled with their strength in developing successful business with their respective experiences made them the ideal fit to take the GlobalSign offerings and market position to the next level." states Masatoshi Kumagai, CEO GMO Internet Inc. "With their proven track record of repeated success in the SSL market, the team has already opened new offices around the world, begun rolling out new systems and is working closely with both enterprises and resellers to effectively meet their requirements as the GlobalSign name moves forward with unprecedented pace."

GlobalSign will be re-launching several enterprise and reseller services over the next few weeks and additional company offices are now open in London, Boston and Tokyo. For further information or to buy products or services, please visit www.globalsign.com.

About GlobalSign

Established in 1996 and as a WebTrust accredited public certificate authority, GlobalSign (a GMO Internet Inc group company) offers publicly trusted SSL (standard and new Extended Validation), S/MIME and code signing certificates. These core solutions allow its thousands of enterprise customers to conduct secure online transactions and data submission, and provide tamper-proof distributable code as well as being able to bind identities to client certificates for email security and remote two factor authentication, such as SSL VPNs. It has sales and support expertise available through its US, UK, Japanese and Belgian offices, available in a number of European and Asian languages.

About GMO Internet Inc.

GMO Internet Inc. (CEO Masatoshi Kumagai) is headquartered in Tokyo and is listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange, First Section (Code: 9449). Its Internet based business areas include Internet infrastructure, media and finance. Further details can be found at http://www.gmo.jp/en/ and Mr Kumagai’s profile can be found at http://gmo.jp/en/profile/message.html.

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