Mark Shuttleworth founded Thawte in South Africa on 1996. It is the first certification authority to issue SSL certificates to public entities outside the United States. It was acquired by Symantec in 2000 and became an important member of Symantec's trust brand.

Because Symantec's certificate business merged with DigitCert in 20 19, Thawte's root certificate is DigitCert, which is a branch brand of DigitCert.

Thawte products mainly include SSL certificates and enterprise OV code signing certificate.

There are three kinds of Thawte SSL certificates: SSL Web Server, SSL 123 and the newly launched SSL Web Server with EV.