Online shopping has its conveniences – it provides online customers with more variety, more bargaining power, and ease of delivery for most, among other benefits. However, for online shoppers to start shopping, they first have to be sure that the website they are dealing with represents a legitimate business and further protects them from cyber-crime.
Website owners that are committed to assuring their customers of online security do so by acquiring an SSL Certificate – which the customers can check to ascertain the level of security to expect from the said websites.
Types of SSL Certificates
There are 3 types of SSL Certificates to choose from: Domain Validation (DV), Organization Validation (OV), and Extended Validation (EV). The DV SSL Certificate is the most basic, and all it does on a trust-level is to validate that the website is hosted on a verifiable domain.
A DV SSL Certificate does not however display information about the legitimacy of the business and is therefore only recommended for use on websites that do not collect sensitive information from their users.
The OV SSL Certificate provides online customers with validated information about the legitimacy of the business and is recommended for websites that collect sensitive information from their users. Getting an OV SSL Certificate requires a thorough validation process which is conducted by the Certificate Authority (CA) responsible for issuing the certification. Customers however need to click on the ‘green secure padlock’ on the address bar to view the information contained in the OV SSL Certificate.
The EV SSL Certificate is the ultimate level of trust that can be granted by the Certificate Authority. Getting an EV Certificate involves a more rigorous process than getting the OV Certificate and is also the most expensive. Websites with an EV Certificate display the validation information on an extended green bar on the address bar. Because the EV Certificate is associated with the highest level of trust, it is the recommended standard for online banks, e-commerce sites, and other security-intensive applications.
Conclusion
Although the three types of SSL Certificates discussed above provide different levels of trust – they all provide a degree of security in that they encrypt the information entered by users. Websites with an SSL Certificate display a ‘green secure padlock’ on the address bar and start with https//: while those without an SSL Certificate do not display the ‘green secure padlock’ and start with http//: meaning they do not encrypt information entered by users.
Online shoppers are increasingly becoming aware of the potential threats to watch out for by checking for the SSL certificates in the address bar, hence the need for website owners to choose the appropriate SSL Certificates for their websites.
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