 | |
 Headquarters in Menlo Park | |
| Company type | Subsidiary |
|---|---|
| Industry | Computer Software |
| Founded | 2002 [1] Menlo Park, California, U.S. |
| Headquarters | Menlo Park, Salt Lake City, London, Frankfurt, Tokyo |
| Products | Encryption applications and management platform |
Number of employees | 225 (2006) |
| Parent | Broadcom |
| Website | web |
PGP Corporation was a company that sold Pretty Good Privacy computer software. It was founded in 2002, and acquired by Symantec in 2010, and by Broadcom in 2019.
PGP Corporation was co-founded in June 2002 by Jon Callas and Phil Dunkelberger (who became CEO), based in Menlo Park, California. [1] It was funded by Rob Theis, general partner, Doll Capital Management and Terry Garnett, general partner, Venrock Associates. [2] The company owned the Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) software, which was originally developed by Phil Zimmermann (who had earlier started a company of a similar name). [3] Originally written in 1991, PGP was one of the first freely and publicly available implementations of public-key cryptography. It was originally used to allow individuals to communicate securely through bulletin board systems. PGP later became standardized and supported by many other applications, including email. PGP Corporation acquired the code and rights to the name from Network Associates (NAI) in August 2002. [4] The company released version 9 of the software in 2005.
PGP Corporation's focus shifted towards the corporate market. [5] In 2004, the company announced plans to integrate with Symantec anti-virus technology. [6]
In 2009, Callas left to be a security consultant. [7]
In February 2010, the company acquired certificate authority TC TrustCenter and its parent company, ChosenSecurity, to form its PGP TrustCenter division. [8]
On April 29, 2010, Symantec Corp. announced the acquisition of PGP Corporation for about $300 million cash. [9] [10] The merger was completed in June of that year.
On August 9, 2019, Broadcom Inc. announced they would be acquiring the Enterprise Security software division of Symantec, which includes PGP Corporation.
In cryptography, encryption is the process of transforming information in a way that, ideally, only authorized parties can decode. This process converts the original representation of the information, known as plaintext, into an alternative form known as ciphertext. Despite its goal, encryption does not itself prevent interference but denies the intelligible content to a would-be interceptor.
Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) is an encryption program that provides cryptographic privacy and authentication for data communication. PGP is used for signing, encrypting, and decrypting texts, e-mails, files, directories, and whole disk partitions and to increase the security of e-mail communications. Phil Zimmermann developed PGP in 1991.
Philip R. Zimmermann is an American computer scientist and cryptographer. He is the creator of Pretty Good Privacy (PGP), the most widely used email encryption software in the world. He is also known for his work in VoIP encryption protocols, notably ZRTP and Zfone. Zimmermann is co-founder and Chief Scientist of the global encrypted communications firm Silent Circle.
A cypherpunk is one who advocates the widespread use of strong cryptography and privacy-enhancing technologies as a means of effecting social and political change. The cypherpunk movement originated with the establishment of an electronic mailing list, through which informal groups sought to achieve privacy and security through proactive use of cryptography. The cypherpunk movement has been active since about 1990 at the latest.
A public key infrastructure (PKI) is a set of roles, policies, hardware, software and procedures needed to create, manage, distribute, use, store and revoke digital certificates and manage public-key encryption.
Antivirus software, also known as anti-malware, is a computer program used to prevent, detect, and remove malware.
Gen Digital Inc. is a multinational software company co-headquartered in Tempe, Arizona and Prague, Czech Republic. The company provides cybersecurity software and services. Gen is a Fortune 500 company and a member of the S&P 500 stock-market index. The company also has development centers in Pune, Chennai and Bangalore. Its portfolio includes Norton, Avast, LifeLock, Avira, AVG, ReputationDefender, and CCleaner.
CA Technologies, Inc., formerly Computer Associates International, Inc., and CA, Inc., was an American multinational enterprise software developer and publisher that existed from 1976 to 2018. CA grew to rank as one of the largest independent software corporations in the world, and at one point was the second largest. The company created systems software that ran in IBM mainframe, distributed computing, virtual machine, and cloud computing environments.
Broadcom Corporation was an American fabless semiconductor company that made products for the wireless and broadband communication industry. It was acquired by Avago Technologies for $37 billion in 2016 and currently operates as a wholly owned subsidiary of the merged entity Broadcom Inc.
Norton AntiVirus is an anti-virus or anti-malware software product founded by Peter Norton, developed and distributed by Symantec since 1990 as part of its Norton family of computer security products. It uses signatures and heuristics to identify viruses. Other features included in it are e-mail spam filtering and phishing protection.
Norton Internet Security, developed by Symantec Corporation, is a discontinued computer program that provides malware protection and removal during a subscription period. It uses signatures and heuristics to identify viruses. Other features include a personal firewall, email spam filtering, and phishing protection. With the release of the 2015 line in summer 2014, Symantec officially retired Norton Internet Security after 14 years as the chief Norton product. It was superseded by Norton Security, a rechristened adaptation of the original Norton 360 security suite. The suite was once again rebranded to Norton 360 in 2019.
Altiris Inc. is a subsidiary of Symantec specializing in service-oriented management software which allows organizations to manage IT assets. They also provide software for web services, security, and systems management products. Established in 1998, Altiris is headquartered in Lindon, Utah, United States. Altiris has over 20,000 customers managing more than 3 million servers and 60 million desktops and laptops.
Broadcom Inc. is an American multinational designer, developer, manufacturer, and global supplier of a wide range of semiconductor and infrastructure software products. Broadcom's product offerings serve the data center, networking, software, broadband, wireless, storage, and industrial markets. As of 2023, some 79 percent of Broadcom's revenue came from its semiconductor-based products and 21 percent from its infrastructure software products and services.
PC Tools', formerly known as WinGuides.com, was a software company acquired by Symantec in 2008; the new owner eventually discontinued the PC Tools name. Company headquarters were in Australia, with offices in Luxembourg, the United States, United Kingdom, Ireland, and Ukraine. The company had previously developed and distributed security and optimization software for the Mac OS X and Microsoft Windows platforms.
Jon Callas is an American computer security expert, software engineer, user experience designer, and technologist who is the co-founder and former CTO of the global encrypted communications service Silent Circle. He has held major positions at Digital Equipment Corporation, Apple, PGP, and Entrust, and is considered "one of the most respected and well-known names in the mobile security industry." Callas is credited with creating several Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) standards, including OpenPGP, DKIM, and ZRTP, which he wrote. Prior to his work at Entrust, he was Chief Technical Officer and co-founder of PGP Corporation and the former Chief Technical Officer of Entrust.
Bugtraq was an electronic mailing list dedicated to issues about computer security. On-topic issues are new discussions about vulnerabilities, vendor security-related announcements, methods of exploitation, and how to fix them. It was a high-volume mailing list, with as many as 776 posts in a month, and almost all new security vulnerabilities were discussed on the list in its early days. The forum provided a vehicle for anyone to disclose and discuss computer vulnerabilities, including security researchers and product vendors. While the service has not been officially terminated, and its archives are still publicly accessible, no new posts have been made since January 2021.
Blue Coat Systems, Inc., was a company that provided hardware, software, and services designed for cybersecurity and network management. In 2016 it was acquired by and folded into Symantec and in 2019 as part of Symantec’s Enterprise Security business it was sold to Broadcom.
Silent Circle is an encrypted communications firm based in Washington DC. Silent Circle provides multi-platform secure communication services for mobile devices and desktops. Launched October 16, 2012, the company operates under a subscription business model. The encryption part of the software used is free software/open source and peer-reviewed. For the remaining parts of Silent Phone and Silent Text, the source code is available on GitHub, but under proprietary software licenses.
Norton, formerly known as Norton by Symantec, is a brand of Gen Digital co-headquartered in Tempe, Arizona and Prague, Czech Republic. Norton originally provided utility software for DOS, and currently offers a variety of products and services related to digital security, identity protection, and online privacy and utilities.
