When you thought that certificate authorities have kissed the pits, how would a bankruptcy sound? The cyberspace bids farewell to DigiNotar.

The fall of DigiNotar is already a catastrophe that everyone expected soon after the hacking incident that triggered bogus certificates to surface, potentially compromising numerous accounts. At first, the Dutch security certificate company looked like an unfortunate victim; but as further investigation progressed, incompetence behind the organization’s security walls came to light—making the attack easy for the cyber criminals. To make it worse, Dutch authorities revoked their accreditation few days after.

This one’s a big punch on the face of VASCO Data Security International Inc., the parent company of DigiNotar. There were a lot of issues tailed to the filing of DigiNotar’s bankruptcy. But their executives were quick to safeguard their main territory and reassured the public that the majority of VASCO remained untouched and strong.

Whatever sadness is looming around DigiNotar today, it’s mother company should still provide a comprehensive report of the damages. VASCO’s Executive Vice President and CFO, Cliff Bown noted, “We are working to quantify the damages caused by the hacker’s intrusion into DigiNotar’s system and will provide an estimate of the range of losses as soon as possible. We expect to report the results of the DigiNotar operations, the losses related to the impairment of intangible assets specifically associated with DigiNotar and the estimated costs associated with the closure of DigiNotar either as a discontinued operation in our future financial statements or we will provide proforma information to identify the impact of DigiNotar on our consolidated results.”

However, Bown negates speculations of a domino effect saying, “While the losses associated with DigiNotar are expected to be significant, we do not expect, given the manner in which the acquisition of DigiNotar was structured, that the value of all of the intangible assets acquired will be fully impaired.  We expect that a significant portion of the value assigned to the intellectual property acquired from DigiNotar to continue to have value as we incorporate the technology into our existing product line.”

The gravity of hacking now proves to be immeasurable. The magnitude of a simple one-time security breach has caused a whole organization that was built by blood, sweat, and tears. Indeed, this calls for reinforcement of security arsenals across the web. Hacking is no longer just an outsider carrying the intention of making a website crash, it is becoming a game changer before our very eyes.