Online companies can visually demonstrate their identity to customers using compatible high security browsers -and customers are able to confirm this identity before trusting sites. This opportunity comes as a result of the greatest development in the Web's secure backbone in over 10 years. It is the introduction of a new kind of SSL Certificate, the first since the technology's origin more than a decade ago. These new certificates are called Extended Validation (EV) SSL Certificates. The Extended Validation architecture has been designed to offer reliable Web site identity information to end consumers so that they can make the best possible decisions about which sites to trust.

This white paper explores these changes and:

• Describes how Extended Validation works
• Explains SSL's identity promise