What Documents Are Needed for a Business SSL Certificate?

Before issuing a certificate, Digicert, our partnering Certificate Authority, is required by industry standard to verify your identity and contact information using both documents you send and publicly listed information. Therefore, you should both send in the necessary documents and check public listings of your company’s contact information to make sure they are up-to-date.

After you have provided the needed documents, there is also a phone verification process used to validate your identity.

Important

Since the validation process does take time, we recommend that you start any certificate renewals at least 15 days before the expiration of the previous SSL certificate.

Check Public Information

Business certificate (or EV for Extended Validation) may need to validate several informations included the real existence of your organization, so documents and verification will be done based on your organization. Digicert is required to use information listed on third-party sites to verify your information. Most commonly, Digicert uses information listed in the Dun and Bradstreet database as the source of public information. Others sources can be used to verify both physical address and phone number :

Digicert will use all these “public” website to verify the phone number and physical address of your organization and some of them to validate :

  • The name of the company, association, or public body.

  • The name of the legal representative.

  • The telephone number associated with your administering Gandi account, usually your business account.

  • Absence of the organization in blocked countries or organization.

The information listed in Dun and Bradstreet should match the information you provide to Digicert.

Provide the Necessary Documents

The following documents are needed to validate your Business certificate:

  • A certificate of incorporation or other legal proof of your company’s registration, delivered from the appropriate authority in your country.

  • A legal photo ID or valid passport of the contact person for the company listed on the above documents.

  • If you are registering for an association, the association’s registration from the public agency that manages such registrations in your country.

Please email them to us at support-en@support.gandi.net along with this cover sheet.

If you are unsure about what documents to send, please feel free to contact our support team.

Extended Validation

Extended validation means the certificate recipient and their website will have to complete a 16-point check to verify details such as:

  • “Blocked” lists (organizations or countries blacklisted).

  • Phising, Scamming lists.

  • Domain name or names ownership.

  • Website existence and ownership.

  • Applicant’s legal, physical and operational existence and identity (over 3 years if possible)

Telephone Validation

For Business certificates, there is a final step which involves a telephone call. In case of Business certificates (EV), a call with be made to the phone number registering to your company, and this step is mandatory.

The phone number to use should be available on one or several of the sources specified above (sources verified and publicly available). It must be provided by a 3rd party or indepedent listing.

The phone call should allow to speak with someone who represent the organization, such as an organization or technical contact or the applicant, and the contact should be able to validate the authority to request a certificate.

Note

To help Digicert confirm the authority, we recommend listing your name in your company’s directory and adding your name to your voicemail response. Be ready to answer a couple of questions about you and your position in the company.