Dun and Bradstreet is commonly known as D&B and is a publically traded company with a headquarters in Short Hills New Jersey.

D&B provides information on businesses and corporations for use in credit decisions. Currently they hold over 200 million business records on file. D&B roots track back all the way to 1841 with the formation of the Mercantile Agency in New York. In 1933 the Mercantile Agency joined with R.G. Dun & Company and became known as Dun and Bradstreet.

In 1962 D&B created The Data Universal Numbering System, abbreviated as DUNS or D-U-N-S, is a system developed and regulated by Dun & Bradstreet (D&B), that assigns a unique numeric identifier, referred to as a "DUNS number" to a single business entity to support D&B's credit reporting practice. It is a common standard worldwide. DUNS users include the European Commission, the United Nations and the United States government. More than 50 global, industry, and trade associations recognize, recommend, or require DUNS. The DUNS database contains over 100 million entries for businesses throughout the world.