The domain in question (drmlocal.cisco.com) resolves to 127.0.0.1. This is a handy and above all cross-platform/cross browser way for a website to talk to a locally installed application (that's running a web server, bound to the loopback interface) by using CORS and/or jsonp.
If the site that wants to make use of this is using SSL, then the locally running web browser also needs to be using SSL and it needs to have a publicly trusted cert.
The other alternative (installing a local CA) seems to be worse.
An option would be for the locally installed app to ask a server for a cert to use while it's running, but that means that the app needs to phone home which it otherwise would not have to.
So I guess we're back to proprietary browser extensions if this technique is frowned upon.
If the site that wants to make use of this is using SSL, then the locally running web browser also needs to be using SSL and it needs to have a publicly trusted cert.
The other alternative (installing a local CA) seems to be worse.
An option would be for the locally installed app to ask a server for a cert to use while it's running, but that means that the app needs to phone home which it otherwise would not have to.
So I guess we're back to proprietary browser extensions if this technique is frowned upon.