Are EV SSL Certs Worth the Investment? New Survey From DevOps.com Says “Yes!”

30 votes, average: 3.60 out of 530 votes, average: 3.60 out of 530 votes, average: 3.60 out of 530 votes, average: 3.60 out of 530 votes, average: 3.60 out of 5 (30 votes, average: 3.60 out of 5, rated)
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Are EV SSL Certificates Worth it? New Research Says “Yes”!

When it comes to web security, Extended Validation (EV) SSL certificates offer the highest level of trust. Do you know why? That’s because an EV SSL fills two major holes in today’s state of web security—authentication and encryption. The former is accomplished through Green Address Bar—with the organization name inscribed in it. As far as the latter is concerned, the data-in-transit is protected by encryption strength of up to 256-bit.

To obtain an EV SSL, an organization must go through an intense verification process. Only those who satisfy the guidelines set by CA/B Forum are issued an EV SSL certificate. This way, a bogus entity cannot get hold of an EV SSL certs to dupe users into a phishing scam.

On paper, the benefits of an EV SSL cert look obvious. However, many users want to know whether that translates into reality, whether the green address bar makes any difference, and whether it’s worth investing in an EV cert.

Recently, Devops.com conducted a survey to determine whether EV SSL certificates live up to the hype or not. What did they find? EV certificates are worth the extra investment. Whether measured on customer behavior, trustworthiness, or brand reputation; EV SSL lives up to the hype quite spectacularly.

Before we get to the survey, let’s see how it was done.

How was the survey done?

The survey incorporates inputs from more than 350 individuals around the world. The participants were shown side-by-side mockups of websites with standard SSL and EV SSL-enabled site. One website was a banking website in a desktop browser, and the other one was a retail site opened in a mobile browser. The participants were asked a series of questions to evaluate their behavior.

Key Findings

The survey found that customer trust was significantly boosted when an EV SSL is installed on a website.

  • EV certificate resulted in significant uplift of user trust across both mobile and desktop browsers.
  • Uplift of 67.9 percent was observed in customers feeling safe doing business online and 57.8 percent in feeling that a site is trustworthy while using an EV certificate.
  • When it comes to desktop browsing, business trustworthiness is 8.6x with an EV cert compared to standard SSL
  • Half of the respondents indicated that the green address bar of the EV certificate websites has a significant influence on their perception of the brand or company.
  • Eight out of ten survey respondents indicated that the green address bar influences their perception of a brand or company—with more than 50 percent stating that it has a significant influence.

Here’s a summary of the results on desktop:

EV SSL Survey Desktop

Here’s a summary of the results on mobile:

EV SSL Survey Mobile

EV SSL Certificates: Definitely Worth It

The true worth of any idea can be evaluated on the basis of how much it has been able to fulfill what it was intended to do. EV SSL certificates were introduced to establish user trust and avoid phishing attacks. As the survey clearly shows, it performs exceedingly well when it comes to increasing user trust.

A major drawback when it comes to EV SSL certs is the price. It’s no surprise that EV SSL certs are priced well-above DV and OV certs. However, they’re no longer as expensive as they used to be. Due to a variety of reasons, the price of an EV SSL certificate has come down significantly. That is why we have seen a remarkable uptrend in the usage of EV SSL certificates.

Ultimately, the effectiveness of EV SSL certificates boils down to the ordinary users. The ordinary users—who’re not familiar with DV, OV or EV—rate EV certs and a clear difference in their behavior is seen while they’re on an EV SSL-enabled site. This is all that matters. As long as the common user cares about EV certs, they’ll continue to play a prominent role in web security.

EV SSL Certificate

Click here to learn more about the report.