A specialist in SSL Certificate security, GlobalSign has announced today that its auditors, Ernst & Young, have awarded the company the WebTrust Seal of Assurance for Certification Authorities for the seventh consecutive year, giving GlobalSign one of the longest WebTrust compliancy records throughout the industry. It has been awarded, in addition, the newly devised WebTrust accreditation for Extended Validation (EV).

Setting an industry standard for the code of practice for Certification Authorities issuing publicly trusted Digital Certificates, the WebTrust accreditation was established by the American Institute for Certified Public Accountants (AICPA). Such trusted Digital Certificates can be used for email security, SSL security, access control and document security. Practices such as physical, network and logical security surrounding the Certificate issuance infrastructure, customer authentication procedures, handling of customer data and business continuity planning were rigorously reviewed against the WebTrust accreditation criteria.

The AICPA has launched a new compliancy audit in line with the Certification Authorities and Browser (CA/B) Forum's EV SSL Certificate Issuance Guidelines after the introduction of Extended Validation SSL Certificates in 2006. In order to issue EV SSL Certificates, Certification Authorities must pass the EV compliancy audit.

EV SSL turns the browser address bar green in the latest versions of the Firefox, Internet Explorer and Opera browsers in addition to showing the standard SSL "padlock". By displaying the organisation's name and the Certification Authority who issued the EV SSL Certificate, it also offers further visible indicators of the organisation behind the website.