The SSL certs which turn the address bar green are known as EV certs (Extended Validation). As the name suggests obtaining these certificate requires more validation of who you and your business are by the SSL issuer. The issuer will check who the domain belongs to whether you are a director of a company who owns the domain, whether the contact number provided with the order is listed on certain online directories against your business etc. By doing this the issuer is able to reassure themselves that the site is genuine.
Because there is more validation when obtaining an EV certificate consumers have a greater sense of security when using a site displaying one, surveys have shown that ecommerce stores actually increase sales when using an EV cert.
The best EV certs are SGC certs Server Gated Cryptology these certs enable older browsers with low encryption (40 or 56 bit) to step up to 128 bit encryption and are therefore more secure.
As Sci-Fi-Si says Verisign are expenive, Thawte can be a little cheaper and they are actually the same company.
I know someone who purchased a EV SGC Cert from http://www.ssl247.co.uk and it was a lot cheaper, however they haven't installed it yet so I dont know if there are any issue.
The following is a list of SSL issuers:
Comodo Cybertrust Entrust GeoTrust GlobalSign Go Daddy Network Solutions QuoVadis Starfield Technologies Thawte VeriSign
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by: Sci-Fi-SiPosted on 2009-09-12 at 10:38:39ID: 25317217
There are a number of sites that will issue you with a free certificate. I think it's called free-ssl ? Something similar.
A few things:
Some sites will offer you a free SSL, but they will only be valid for 30 days, some even offer 90 days. I have however found one site that will issue you with an SSL that is valid for one year from date of issue.
One of the issues I had with my free certificate was that all browsers would accept it (it's certifying body or CA) no problem - apart from IE. This meant every visitor using the IE browser would be warned that the CA was not an accepted authority by Microsoft - for everyone else - no problem.
All an SSL does is provide a secure channel of communication between computer A and computer B, it bears no reflection of the morality of the company on the receiving end - anyway I digress.
Agreed:
Veri 'expensive' sign charge a ridiculous amount of money for what is effectively a computer generated random 'prime number' it's a farce! The monopolies commission should be on this - will the Universe run out of prime numbers? No I don't think so.
Any have a visit to: http://cert.startcom.org/<
You will need to point port 443 on your router to your web server and you can only have one cert per IP address/ web server. Installing them can be a pain, but they do have some basic instructions.
All the best
Sci-Fi Si