As you know the release dates of Internet Explorer 7 and Windows Vista will be very important to the world of SSL Certificates, as IE 7 will add the capability for High Assurance SSL Certificates and its Phishing Filter and Windows Vista will cause OCSP to be defaulted to on, which will result in stronger revokation checking. Well, Microsoft just went to RC 1 with Windows Vista, which goes out to an estimated 6 million beta testers.

Today Microsoft made its Internet Explorer Release Candidate 1 available. As with previous versions of the browser, the Web site describes it as "easier and more secure." High Assurance SSL helps Microsoft with both of those missions, of course. More secure because High Assurance SSL gives users the tools to have greater confidence in a site's authentic identity and to more effectively choose which sites they trust and which they do not. Easier because previously enigmatic and inscrutible certificate information is now presented in easy, intelligible, sensible interfaces.

The estimated number of views of the VeriSign Secured Seal has exceeded 80 million per day. That averages over 29 billion views of the VeriSign Secured Seal per year. If we want to say there are 500 million active Internet users in the world, that averages almost 60 views per active user per year, or about five seals viewed per month. Each.

If you missed the very well attended Web seminar on High Assurance SSL, we archived it for you. Now I have a more direct link to the seminar so you don't have to go through all the steps I originally laid out. You can get directly to the High Assurance SSL Certificates seminar as well as a bunch of other VeriSign seminars. At the time of posting mine is about five down on the list. After the seminar you'll want to read the follow-up questions on High Assurance SSL. These links are especially useful if you have a co-worker, let's say, who missed the seminar. Now you can send the link and that co-worker can get the straight story on the big, new developments in SSL.