Organization validated ssl certificate involves full business validation. This means that you will be required to prove that you are a legal and legitmate business, normally having to provide several pieces of documentation. The documents required are normally items like your business license, and major utilitiy bills that are valid within the past 6 months that show the exact company name, and address that will be on the ssl certificate.

Having a domain validated certificate is a step above domain validated ssl certificates in terms of consumer confidence. Once you’ve proven that you’re a legitimate business, you can use a dynamic site seal on your website to easily show customers that your website communication is secure, and they can purchase that product or enter the critical information without worry.

The downside to organization validation certificates is the issue time. It may take some time to dig around to find those business documents, or even go to make copies and fax them to the ssl provider. If you do some planning, this really isn’t a downside in the end because you may only have to do this once every few years, and thousands or even millions of people will have visited the site and benefited from this additional information that’s included in an domain validated ssl certificate.