"Security giant Symantec is taking another step toward global domination of the information security market with the purchase of VeriSign's authentication business. Back in April it purchased PGP Corporation and GuardianEdge. VeriSign is the best known Certificate Authority; they are virtually synonymous with certificates for SSL and PKI. It seems like this could dilute the trust value of their brand rather than enhance it. It is not clear yet what effects this will have on VeriSign customers but the cynic in me says it can't be good. In terms of putting all your eggs in one basket, this will sure make Symantec a juicy target for hackers (as if they weren't already). Imagine you could hack one company and control a large chunk of endpoint security software and the bulk of the Internet's public key infrastructure."