Ask HN: How did Digicert come to dominate valuable PKI certificates?

2 points by thinking001001 3 years ago | 1 comment

I have noticed that many corporate tech companies rely on Digicert, such as the fact that it is the root certificate for the consumer websites of Microsoft, iCloud, Facebook, Amazon, banks, even HN. This is despite the fact that browsers don't even discriminate in value between different PKI certificate providers. It is much more obvious why Lets Encrypt came to dominate the world of open-source projects (it is free). But why did so many big players centralize around Digicert? Is it just human behavior, copying?

neximo64 3 years ago |

The brand was well known prior to let's encrypt. They also offer flexibility that is less risky, e.g on longer duration certificates.

There is also strong assurance it works across old browsers, old computers and across the world.

Additionally you can do multi domain validation and wildcards too. There is also Extended Validation where they actually check your business exists, etc and no cases of it being faked, etc.

There is also a perceived higher standard in the quality of assurance offered as it is a for profit enterprise and if there was a breach for example it would hurt far worse than say for Lets Encrypt.