Thawte

Thawte is a certificate authority that issues digital certificates to verify identity and enable encryption on the internet. It was founded in 1995 by Mark Shuttleworth as Thawte Consulting (Pty) Ltd in South Africa, with early operations based in Cape Town. The company emerged as one of the first publicly trusted CAs, expanding its SSL/TLS certificate offerings to customers worldwide.

In 1999, Thawte was acquired by VeriSign for about $575 million, integrating its PKI services into VeriSign’s growing SSL certificate business. Following corporate reorganizations, Thawte remained part of VeriSign’s certificate portfolio, and in 2010 VeriSign sold its Authentication Services and SSL business to Symantec.

In 2017, Symantec’s Website Security business, including Thawte, was acquired by DigiCert, placing Thawte within the DigiCert family. Today, Thawte operates as a DigiCert brand and continues to provide SSL/TLS certificates as well as related PKI products, such as code signing and email signing certificates, to organizations of various sizes. The brand maintains a presence in the browser trust ecosystem and supports a range of digital identity and encryption needs in enterprise and public hosting environments.

Overall, Thawte’s history reflects the consolidation of major PKI players over the past two decades, while the brand has persisted as part of DigiCert’s portfolio and its ongoing certificate offerings.