Verisign Support for AAPI Communities and COVID Relief in India

At Verisign we have a commitment to making a positive and lasting impact on the global internet community, and on the communities in which we live and work.

This commitment guided our initial efforts to help these communities respond to and recover from the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, over a year ago. And at the end of 2020, our sense of partnership with our local communities helped shape our efforts to alleviate COVID-related food insecurity in the areas where we have our most substantial footprint. This same sense of community is reflected in our partnership with Virginia Ready, which aims to help individuals in our home State of Virginia access training and certification to pivot to new careers in the technology sector.

We also believe that our team is one of our most important assets. We particularly value the diverse origins of our people; we have colleagues from all over the world who, in turn, are closely connected to their own communities both in the United States and elsewhere. A significant proportion of our staff are of either Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) or South Asian origin, and today we are pleased to announce two charitable contributions, via our Verisign Cares program, directly related to these two communities.

First, Verisign is pleased to associate ourselves with the Stand with Asian Americans initiative, launched by AAPI business leaders in response to recent and upsetting episodes of aggression toward their community. Verisign supports this initiative and the pledge for which it stands, and has made a substantial contribution to the initiative’s partner, the Asian Pacific Fund, to help uplift the AAPI community.

Second, and after consultation with our staff, we have directed significant charitable contributions to organizations helping to fight the worsening wave of COVID-19 in India. Through Direct Relief we will be helping to provide oxygen and other medical equipment to hospitals, while through GiveIndia we will be supporting families in India impacted by COVID-19.

The ‘extended Verisign family’ of our employees, and their families and their communities, means a tremendous amount to us – it is only thanks to our talented and dedicated people that we are able to continue to fulfill our mission of enabling the world to connect online with reliability and confidence, anytime, anywhere.

Verisign expands its community support initiatives, with contributions to COVID-19 relief in India and to the Stand with Asian Americans initiative.

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Meeting the Evolving Challenges of COVID-19

The COVID-19 pandemic, when it struck earlier this year, ushered in an immediate period of adjustment for all of us. And just as the challenges posed by COVID-19 in 2020 have been truly unprecedented, Verisign’s mission – enabling the world to connect online with reliability and confidence, anytime, anywhere – has never been more relevant. We are grateful for the continued dedication of our workforce, which enables us to provide the building blocks people need for remote working and learning, and simply for keeping in contact with each other.

At Verisign we took early action to adopt a COVID-19 work posture to protect our people, their families, and our operations. This involved the majority of our employees working from home, and implementing new cleaning and health safety protocols to protect those employees and contractors for whom on-site presence was essential to maintain key functions.

Our steps to address the pandemic did not stop there. On March 25 we announced a series of measures to help the communities where we live and work, and the broader DNS community in which we operate. This included, under our Verisign Cares program, making contributions to organizations supporting key workers, first responders and medical personnel, and doubling the company’s matching program for employee giving so that employee donations to support the COVID-19 response could have a greater impact.

Today, while vaccines may offer signs of long term hope, the pandemic has plunged many families into economic hardship and has had a dramatic effect on food insecurity in the U.S., with an estimated 50 million people affected. With this hardship in mind, we have this week made contributions totaling $275,000 to food banks in the areas where we have our most substantial footprint: the Washington DC-Maryland-Virginia region; Delaware; and the canton of Fribourg, in Switzerland. This will help local families put food on their tables during what will be a difficult winter for many.

The pandemic has also had a disproportionate, and potentially permanent, impact on certain sectors of the economy. So today Verisign is embarking on a partnership with Virginia Ready, which helps people affected by COVID-19 access training and certification for in-demand jobs in sectors such as technology. We are making an initial contribution of $250,000 to Virginia Ready, and will look to establish further partnerships of this kind across the country in 2021.

As people around the world gather online to address the global challenges posed by COVID-19, we want to share some of the steps we have taken so far to support the communities we serve, while keeping our critical internet infrastructure running smoothly.

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