Certified safety instead of safety warning

Whenever you request personal data or operate an online shop with payment options, a certificate for SSL encryption is a must. For a serious web presence and to protect against fraud, simple contact forms, login areas (including your own admin areas) and smaller websites such as blogs, social sites and web business cards should also be encrypted. SSL certificates are essential whenever important and sensitive data is transmitted on the internet.

SSL stands for Secure Sockets Layer and is an encryption protocol for data transmission.

HTTPS (Hyper Text Transfer Protocol Secure) is displayed in the browser address bar if you have encrypted your website with an SSL certificate. Click on the lock symbol in the address bar to call up exact details of the certificate.

The certificates differ significantly in the examination procedure carried out by the certification authority.

• domain validation
• owner validation
• advanced validation

Domain validation

Domain validation is the easiest and fastest way for GlobalSign to verify your domain. It indicates to your website visitors that your domain has been verified and that you have legitimate control over the domain name. This type of validation is performed on AlphaSSL, DomainSSL and Wildcard certificate types.

Owner validation

The certificate types OrganizationSSL / Wildcard are subjected to a more stringent validation method, the "Organization Validation". You as the applicant must prove the existence of your company. Additional external documents such as an excerpt from the commercial register will be used for verification. Your website visitor will also be shown the correctness of your company data.

Extended validation

The ExtendedSSL certificate requires the strictest verification method with an "Extended Validation". Externally accessible sources and specially requested documents are checked according to precisely defined criteria. The greatest credibility of the website is made clear to your website visitor by the verified identity of the company in the certificate. This can be recognised by clicking on the padlock symbol in the address line by the marking "Issued for: Name of your company".

If you order an SSL certificate, it only protects the main domain, such as domain.com and, as a bonus, www.domain.com . If you would like to encrypt additional domains or subdomains, you must order these as an additional option - or you can use a wildcard certificate, which offers further advantages.

The issuance time for SSL certificates varies depending on the type of certificate and the level of authentification required; it can take some minutes or up a week after order verification. Certificates that merely validate a domain, such as the AlphaSSL and the DomainSSL Certificate tend to be issued within just a short time after order verification. For the OrganizationSSL and OrganizationSSL Wildcard the domain owner is also being validated. Issuance of these certificates does therefore take around one to two working days after order verification. While the issuance of certificates with extended validation for domain and certificate holder may take up to a week until 10 working days. This applies for instance to the certificates called ExtendedSSL with EV.

Please note that the issuance times for certificates involving owner checks also depend on how quickly the respective certificate provider obtains the necessary documents from you.