SSL Certificate Assurance

General Information
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SSL Certificate Assurance

In this article, we are going to discuss what SSL Assurance is and how it can affect your decisions when selecting the appropriate SSL Certificate for your domains. There are different levels of assurance that are recognized in a more standardized fashion. These include Domain Validation (DV), Organization Validation (OV), and Extended Validation (EV).

What Is Assurance?

Assurance, with regard to an SSL, is a term used to describe how much verification as occurred on the behalf of a Certificate Authority and the level of trustworthiness that can be expected. The more steps involved in verifying the applicant the higher the level of trust that when a visitor navigates to the applicant’s site that the applicant website is a more accurate representation of the business or personality.

Levels Of Assurance:

  • Domain Validation (DV) - These certificates provide low to medium assurance. This validation process by the Certificate Authority verifies whether the certificate applicant can prove domain ownership through an approval email that is sent to an administrative email account for the domain.

    • These Certificates are a good solution for personal blogs and small businesses

  • Organization Validation (OV) - These certificates provide high assurance. The validation process for the OV certificates includes the applicant to be able to verify ownership of the domain, but in addition to also validate the legal and physical existence of the business. The validation process for OV certificates can sometimes take up to 2 business days to complete.

    • These Certificates are a good solution for Medium and Large volume businesses.

  • Extended Validation (EV) - These Certificates provide very high assurance. These certificates are also known as Green Bar certificates because this level of assurance is reflected in a browser address bar. The validation process for this includes the verification of the previous two but also will go a step further by needing a contact phone to directly communicate with the business entity to validate.

    • These Certificates are a good solution for Large volume to Enterprise level businesses.

For more information regarding our available options for SSL Certificates, please see the following link: