Many safety and security systems and features are hidden out of view, quietly anonymous to everyday users and organizations. Devices in cars are a perfect example in the physical world — airbags, vehicle tracking and theft alarms — while background encryption — digital signing, and SSL certificates — are good examples in the digital world. Without us knowing or even having to be aware of their presence, they quietly keep us safe and secure.

Like all good safety systems, most people remain unaware of the existence of such systems of protection until presented with an error message or alert, a web page’s provenance questioned, or a transaction refused. Otherwise, a small padlock icon near a browser’s URL bar is probably the only notable feature visible to most, one that assures the user that they can transact and interact on the internet safely.

As the use of and the shape of the internet changes, so too must the underpinning security models and features that ensure users’ and systems’ safe interactions. For example, in the last ten years, it’s become very much more important that machine entities can be identified and have their integrity checked. At the consumer level, these are most obvious in IoT devices; however, essentially anything connected to the internet that is in some way privy to sensitive information (even a routing device) needs to be verified.

When this facility goes wrong or is circumvented, it can affect any business or individual. One of the indicators of this type of activity is the rise in phishing attacks. Increasingly, machine identity verification is gaining importance — email traffic’s controlling technologies now need to prove their identity too. It might seem odd to a “civilian” that an SMTP relay server should be issued with a renewing, trusted certificate of authenticity. But, without such a facility, the internet would be a lawless place, and email itself would be unusable in any practical sense.

The vital role select organizations play in keeping the online world safe is not often spoken about in mainstream media, possibly because it is little understood. But there are trends in technology that most people can recognize, and it’s the role of organizations like GlobalSign that ensure that new facilities and technological capabilities can adhere to their makers’ visions. In brief, technology can advance without being compromised by hackers or others keen to exploit for profit, political gain, or just to spread anarchic mischief.

We’ve mentioned IoT once already, but apart from the connected doorbell or aircon controller, there is a much bigger picture. In 2021 fleets of IoT devices are online that monitor, attenuate, and control critical systems in manufacturing, engineering, utilities, mining and many other hundreds of industries and settings. Where these devices perform critical roles, either in groups or alone, they need to be able to operate in a system of trust — trust at machine-to-machine level, and trust between systems and human operators, users, and eventually, beneficiaries.

This vital work continues to this day, done by organizations whose technology and expertise provide secure environments. Doing so at the deepest possible levels of the internet’s workings for a generation is GlobalSign. It’s one of those names whose work has touched just about everyone on the planet – or at least anyone who has connected to the internet since the mid-1990s.

Most tech companies have had to adapt themselves to change, but GlobalSign is one of the few that has instead empowered and facilitated other companies’ ability to change. Its range of encryption and security oversight functions complements its role as one of the world’s largest and longest-standing Certificate Authorities (CAs).

GlobalSign provides public key infrastructure and delegates to Registration Authorities that ensure the encryption of billions of transactions daily. Every time a computer boots, or a phone turns on and checks its firmware’s veracity, it could well be GlobalSign’s work that is helping keep users safe. Every day, e-commerce traffic, encrypted video or chat messages, and data movements of many types take place safely.

Most IT professionals in many capacities will have come across GlobalSign throughout the course of their careers, from web designers purchasing SSL Certificates to software developers signing codes and applications before publishing or distribution. As a provider of safe digital environments, GlobalSign’s work touches the technology creators’ work, as well as everyday internet users.

In a further article on Tech Wire Asia, we’ll be looking in more detail at GlobalSign’s portfolio, focusing on its API-connected Digital Signing Service. That helps organizations prove ownership and provenance over their data and media, at scales and with the type of accessibility and scales that come from its cloud-based implementation.

Check back to read more about that product specifically, but in the meantime, if you want to learn more about an organization that literally helps promote trust on the internet at just about every level, head on over to the GlobalSign website.