To stay competitive, many (read: most) organizations are moving online. Whether it’s by actually providing products and services over the internet or just through a strong presence on websites and social media, they are taking their business to the digital sphere. This has skyrocketed the number of online transactions, but has also seriously increased data theft and cyber-attacks.
In the face of the increasing sophistication and complexity of these attacks, website authentication has become a prerequisite for organizations and consumers to ensure their security online.
SSL is a security technology for encrypting links between a server and a client such as a webserver and a web browser. EV SSL certificates, a sub-category of SSL, offer the highest standard of security to websites. Currently, the Global EV SSL Certification Market is witnessing significant growth and is expected to grow at a CAGR of 32.52 percent from 2014-2019.
Types of SSL Certification:
DV Certificate
This is a basic level, simple certification that validates an organization’s domain name and ensures its control over the domain. A DV certificate is relatively cheap compared with other certificated, and only provides minimum protection to a website. The certificate authority merely checks the right of the applicant to use a specific domain name when a DV certificate is issued, and doesn’t investigate the company’s identity, or provide information to the customer’s browser other than the encryption information. This makes it easy for hackers to acquire confidential information.
OV Certificate
This is the most widely used certification using SSL technology, since they provide more assurance than DV certificated but aren’t overly complex or expensive. OV certificates provide organizational information to end-users on the Secure Site Seal.
EV Certificate
This is the highest level of authentication and the most sophisticated SSL certification currently available. If the EV certificate is authenticated, a customer’s browser bar turns green to confirm the security, and the certificate authority checks the right of the website to use its domain name.
In addition, it does a thorough evaluation of the organization itself, including whether the organization’s identity matches legally, physically, and operationally with its official records. The EV certification process is more time consuming and expensive than both DV and OV certification, but Websites that have EV certification are highly secure from hacking.
In 2014, the EV SSL Certification segment contributed a 15.42 percent share to the Global SSL Certification Market, and this share is expected to jump to 23.14 percent of the market by 2019.
A lot of this growth can be attributed to uptake from large enterprises, but a lot of SMEs are also expected to adopt EV SSL certification over the projected period.
