Netscape and Verisign offer digital certification

Netscape has extended its partnership with security equipment developer Verisign, leading to the launch of a digital certification service for enterprise customers. The service is part of the Net software specialist's drive to become the first port of call for ecommerce products.

The certificate ensures any communication or transaction made over a corporate extranet is completely secure. Netscape hopes the service will help companies to build their own public key infrastructure (PKI) - a secure network used by business to conduct ecommerce. Only companies that currently use Netscape's Certificate Server software will have access to the service.

The service is also targeted at enterprise software suppliers and Internet service providers which will be able to deploy certification systems to their customers.

The announcement mirrors a similar deal between Novell and security software company, Entrust Technologies on Monday. Novell is combining its Directory Services product with Entrust's PKI product to provide network authentication services within Novell's NetWare 5.