GlobalSign Launches Chinese Operations

Certification Authority Opens New Office in Shanghai

PORTSMOUTH, NH – February 25, 2008 – GlobalSign (www.globalsign.com), one of the longest established Certification Authorities (CA) and specialists in SSL security, today announced the launch of a newly established office in China.  GlobalSign now has a strong global reach with offices in the US, UK, China and Japan as well as the original office in Brussels, Belgium. 

Since the market reforms took place in China, the country has become better connected to the global economy and is placing greater emphasis on science and technology.  According to a recent conference on IT growth in China*, in 2007 over 30 million individuals were engaging in the e-retail phenomenon, a massive jump from the four million recorded in 2004.  GlobalSign recognized that electronic and Internet related business was also playing a key role in Chinas’ rapid economic development.  In response, it established a subsidiary in this region to strengthen its business presence in China, an essential element to successfully conducting global business operations.
                                                                                                                                                 
“In the Asia Pacific region, China’s economy has demonstrated rapid development and provides huge potential for investment and expansion,” commented Ichiro Chujo,  GlobalSign Group CEO.  “We’re placing great emphasis on a superb customer experience and throughout 2007 redesigned and rebuilt our enterprise and reseller systems from the bottom up.  Now GlobalSign is in an ideal position to take the SSL market by storm and spread the awareness of the GlobalSign trusted root further into the Far East.”

In 2007, GlobalSign completely re-branded with the backing of its new parent company GMO Internet Inc (GMO).  It began to roll-out new products, solutions and systems and geared itself up to compete head-on with the incumbent VeriSign under the new GlobalSign banner.  Independent analyst firm Netcraft reported an impressive 180%** growth for its SSL Certificate products in 2007 – eclipsing the market growth rate of around 20% and VeriSign’s growth rate of 16%.

* Reference http://tech.163.com/special/000915RB/ws2007.html
**December 2007 Netcraft Secure Server Survey, Netcraft Ltd.

About GlobalSign
Established in 1996 and as a WebTrust accredited public certificate authority, GlobalSign offers publicly trusted SSL, including new Extended Validation SSL Certificates, S/MIME and code signing certificates for use on all Windows platforms including Mobile. The GlobalSign RootSign program allows the widely distributed and highly trusted GlobalSign root CA certificates to provide immediate trust for Microsoft CA and other inhouse CA users, thereby eliminating the costs associated with supporting non-trusted root CA certificates within an enterprise. These core GlobalSign 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.  The company has a rich history of innovation within the online security market and operates sales and support offices in the US, UK, Japan and Belgium, with services 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 and media. 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.