Yesterday VeriSign announced that VeriSign-branded SSL Certificates now support IDN. For years I have told people that IDN stood for International Domain Name, but in preparation for our press release on this topic, I have learned that the actual term is Internationalized Domain Name. Go figure.
Anyway, IDN support means that a Web site can use character sets beyond the standard ASCII in its domain name. So you could use an umlaut or a Kanji character, for example. In the long term IDN affords the opportunity for non-English Web communications to have a truer experience by using the native alphabet in domains. One of the elements that’s necessary is for sites to be able to secure themselves when these domain names are in use, and VeriSign is ready to do its part in that regard.