SSL Certs - DV vs. EV vs. OV

ctrlaltdel21

• April 07, 2021 19:54

Does purchasing an EV or OV SSL certificate make your website any more secure than a site with the free cPanel DV SSL certificate? What reason would you purchase an EV or OV?

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  ffeingol

  • April 08, 2021 01:25

  The all provide the same encryption. The only real difference (now days) is that some of the paid SSL's provide "seals" that you can put on your web site and they may add from the "marketing" point of view.

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  ctrlaltdel21

  • April 08, 2021 13:26

  Thanks for reply. That's essentially what I found in my research - it's just for "marketing".

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  cPDavidL

  • April 08, 2021 14:02

  Greetings! As with most things in the hosting world, the benefits depend entirely on the goals one has for their tools. In terms of encryption, there is no difference between the different certificate levels. As their name implies, the difference is in how in-depth the validation process is prior to its being issued. Depending on your business needs, that additional level of validation may be important for the trust of the site's users. Additionally, certain industries may have specific certification requirements, which include that additional validation. Financial services sites being one of the first to come to mind. Encryption is obviously important, from a security perspective. However, there's certainly an argument to be made about the impact on a site's purpose, resulting from a user's confidence(or lack thereof) in a site's authenticity. As technical-minded folks, we sometimes tend to disregard the ultimate goal of SSL certificates: user trust.

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  ffeingol

  • April 08, 2021 14:15

  Not to sidetrack the thread, but I'll respectfully disagree with @cPDavidL a bit. For a long time we have a EV cert on our site/billing portal to give customers the "extra confidence" of the green address bar. With the not so recent changes with all major browsers defaulting to secure (and only displaying a warning when they are not secure) it's virtually impossible for an average customer to distinguish between a DV, EV or any other certificate. It's still possible to tell (if you are technical) but the "value" of an EV cert seems to be greatly diminished.

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