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	December 2005 Count	December 2005 %	November 2005 Count	November 2005 %	Growth %
Verisign	73,620	30.43	72,998	31.23	-2.55
Equifax (Geotrust)	45,369	18.76	42,973	18.39	2.02
Thawte	37,918	15.68	36,938	15.80	-0.81
Comodo Limited	20,408	8.44	20,211	8.65	-2.43
Starfield Technologies, Inc.	5,498	2.27	4,817	2.06	10.29
Unknown	4,038	1.67	3,714	1.59	5.06
Entrust.net	3,834	1.58	3,641	1.56	1.75
SomeOrganization	3,137	1.30	3,038	1.30	-0.22
The USERTRUST Network	2,337	0.97	2,417	1.03	-6.57
Snake Oil, Ltd	2,034	0.84	2,056	0.88	-4.40
SWsoft, Inc.	1,928	0.80	1,830	0.78	1.80
ChainedSSL	1,873	0.77	1,669	0.71	8.44
AddTrust AB	1,596	0.66	868	0.37	77.67
U.S. Government	1,420	0.59	1,380	0.59	-0.57
XRamp Security Services Inc	1,225	0.51	1,174	0.50	0.83
DigiCert Inc.	1,036	0.43	926	0.40	8.11
TC TrustCenter for Security in Data Networks GmbH	767	0.32	732	0.31	1.25
IPS Certification Authority s.l.	747	0.31	708	0.30	1.95
Network Solutions L.L.C.	638	0.26	526	0.23	17.20
GlobalSign nv-sa	609	0.25	566	0.24	3.97
Root CA	533	0.22	495	0.21	4.05
FreeSSL	410	0.17	446	0.19	-11.17
Betrusted Japan Co.,Ltd.	352	0.15	326	0.14	4.34
Plesk, Inc.	298	0.12	306	0.13	-5.90
Deutsche Telekom AG	295	0.12	287	0.12	-0.68
GTE Corporation	241	0.10	245	0.10	-4.95
ispgateway	227	0.09	225	0.10	-2.51
Ipswitch,Inc.	210	0.09	199	0.09	1.97
TDC	161	0.07	150	0.06	3.72
Akamai	157	0.06	147	0.06	3.20
Kubota Systems Inc.	154	0.06	149	0.06	-0.13
Comodo Japan Inc.	151	0.06	130	0.06	12.24
Apache HTTP Server	151	0.06	144	0.06	1.33
Positive Software	148	0.06	140	0.06	2.15
Plesk Inc.	134	0.06	133	0.06	-2.64
Internet Widgits Pty Ltd	120	0.05	120	0.05	-3.37
Positive Software Corporation	113	0.05	61	0.03	79.00
Unizeto Sp. z o.o.	102	0.04	97	0.04	1.61
NetLock Halozatbiztonsagi Kft.	102	0.04	98	0.04	0.57
OCC	101	0.04	97	0.04	0.61
Digital Signature Trust Co.	93	0.04	84	0.04	6.98
Thawte Certification	92	0.04	98	0.04	-9.29
IceWarp Software	92	0.04	90	0.04	-1.22
ICS_TREE	83	0.03	77	0.03	4.16
Firstserver, Inc.	80	0.03	65	0.03	18.93
GlobalSign Inc	73	0.03	68	0.03	3.73
CRU	69	0.03	64	0.03	4.18
RM	68	0.03	66	0.03	-0.44
CNRS	68	0.03	62	0.03	5.98
Equifax Secure Inc	67	0.03	72	0.03	-10.08
Azero	62	0.03	62	0.03	-3.37
United Network Communications Co., Ltd.	59	0.02	59	0.03	-3.37
Sun Microsystems Inc	59	0.02	57	0.02	0.02
Trusted Secure Certificate Authority	57	0.02	51	0.02	8.00
Japan Certification Services, Inc.	56	0.02	56	0.02	-3.37
NTT Communications Corporation	55	0.02	43	0.02	23.60
ICP-Brasil	55	0.02	56	0.02	-5.10
XYZ Corporation	53	0.02	54	0.02	-5.16
UniCERT Brasil Certificadora	53	0.02	48	0.02	6.69
Stunnel Developers Ltd	53	0.02	50	0.02	2.43
MULTICERT-CA	52	0.02	53	0.02	-5.19
My Company Ltd	50	0.02	48	0.02	0.66
WebMoney Transfer	49	0.02	46	0.02	2.93
StartCom Ltd.	49	0.02	37	0.02	27.97
Baltimore Technologies Japan Co.,Ltd.	49	0.02	47	0.02	0.74
FNMT	43	0.02	39	0.02	6.54
SCNC	41	0.02	41	0.02	-3.37
DFN-CERT Services GmbH	41	0.02	39	0.02	1.58
Hostgator	40	0.02	36	0.02	7.37
SuSE Linux Web Server	38	0.02	34	0.01	8.00
University of Maryland	37	0.02	36	0.02	-0.69
Temp Certificate!	37	0.02	33	0.01	8.34
Beocity	36	0.01	38	0.02	-8.46
S1 Corporation	35	0.01	32	0.01	5.69
Etisalat	35	0.01	35	0.01	-3.37
Pro Futuro S.A.	34	0.01	29	0.01	13.29
Carnegie Mellon University	33	0.01	32	0.01	-0.35
BlueHost.Com	33	0.01	26	0.01	22.64
A-Trust Ges. f. Sicherheitssysteme im elektr. Datenverkehr GmbH	33	0.01	31	0.01	2.86
CETI	32	0.01	32	0.01	-3.37
Audkenni hf.	32	0.01	31	0.01	-0.25
Webmin Software	31	0.01	35	0.01	-14.41
Stalker Software, Inc.	31	0.01	29	0.01	3.29
Advanced Extranet Server	31	0.01	30	0.01	-0.15
cv. Candi Internet	30	0.01	30	0.01	-3.37
WEBMASTERS.COM	29	0.01	0	0.00	N/A
University of Helsinki	29	0.01	29	0.01	-3.37
TAIWAN-CA.COM	29	0.01	0	0.00	N/A
SSL	29	0.01	0	0.00	N/A
Massachusetts Institute of Technology	29	0.01	27	0.01	3.79
IceWarp Ltd.	29	0.01	31	0.01	-9.61
Default Web Site	29	0.01	25	0.01	12.09
domainsofnote.com	28	0.01	28	0.01	-3.37
Prvni certifikacni autorita a.s.	28	0.01	0	0.00	N/A
University of Washington	27	0.01	25	0.01	4.36
CFC	27	0.01	29	0.01	-10.03
IT Bureau of Hainan Province	26	0.01	0	0.00	N/A
Franke & Partner	26	0.01	26	0.01	-3.37
CsideNet	26	0.01	0	0.00	N/A
XCOM	25	0.01	25	0.01	-3.37

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.