History

WISeKey SA is Swiss registered company, with headquarters in Geneva, formed in February 1999 as a result of the founder Carlos Moreira experience as expert of several International Organizations, including the UN and five years of university research work into Internet security, PKI and Digital Identification.

WISeKey commissioned the common global root certificate in its high security facility in the Swiss Alps in June 1999 and the official announcement was made during the Internet Society INET99 conference, taking place in San Jose, California June 22-25, 1999.

This facility is amongst the highest security facilities in the world, thus ensuring the safekeeping of the world's common root certificate.

The WISeKey common global root certificate is the geo-political root certificate for high assurance Certification Authorities around the world. The common global root solves the crucial problem of cross certification, which is a growing problem as more and more countries, corporations and industry sectors set up certification authorities for their communities of interest.

For many years there has been debate about the benefits of a shared common global root certificate versus cross certification. The answer has always been a common global root but until now, the political question has been where it should be located. The obvious answer is Switzerland as the homes of almost all non-politically based inter governmental and international organizations. The second answer to this question is control of the root certificate policies by a representative organization which is provided by the Global Certificate Authority Forum (GCAF).

WISeKey promotes the use of digital certification for both authentication and authorization. Through its partnership with the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), WISeKey is providing e-commerce solutions based on the mass usage of certification by Internet users for authorized access to intranets and restricted web based sites. This approach changes the entire dynamics of how the Internet is used and will propel its transactional based usage into the 21st century through the creation of the world's largest virtual network used by 188 countries.

WISeKey is a service provider to certification authorities using a certification practice statement developed by GCAF as the minim standard for high authenticate issuance of certificates. Therefore it is not a competitor to existing Certification Authorities but instead, provides them with the distinctive advantage of global recognition. Any Certification Authority complying with the GCAF certification practice statement can share the common global root under the WISeKey umbrella.

At this stage, every major Certification Authority in the world that has been approached has agreed to utilize the WISeKey common global root. In addition, more than twenty countries in the process of creating national certification authorities have also requested usage of the WISeKey common global root.

WISeKey sees a perfect correlation between the goals the Internet Society is pursuing and the service provided by WISeKey. This is a prime reason why the Internet Society has joined with WISeKey in partnership with the International Secure Electronic Transaction Organization to provide a web certificate for certification of web sites.

This service together with the WISeKey partnership with the ITU to implement a new global system of e-commerce creates a perfect environment for the future of e-commerce. As the International Agency responsible for implementing e-commerce, the ITU is ensuring that the highest open standards are implemented to enable all countries in the world to benefit from the introduction of true e-commerce, accessible to all regardless of origin.