Business Strategy and Outlook
| Emma Williams |Verisign provides registry services for several top-level domains, or TLDs, and infrastructure essential to the functioning of the internet. Verisign plays a vital role in supporting the Domain Name System, or DNS, which is akin to a massive address book that matches human friendly domain names to the accompanying numbers-based Internet Protocol, or IP, address. This allows an end user to browse the internet and access requested content via a network of interconnected servers. The company operates software and infrastructure globally to support the translation of domain names to IP addresses for its assigned domains, including managing zone files and registration and policies for the specified domain. Verisign also provides root zone maintenance services, operates two of the world’s 13 roots servers that are foundational to the DNS, and manages a shared registration system that allows registrars to query the availability of and manage second level domains.