One of the most straightforward validation checks for an Organisation Validated SSL certificate is proving Locality Presence. For this requirement, the Certificate Authority (CA) verifies that your organisation or company has an active legal presence in its registered location.
What is Locality Presence?
To fulfil the Locality Presence requirement, the Certificate Authority needs to verify your organisation’s full street address. The CA will attempt to verify this information by searching an Online Government database or an acceptable third-party database. They check these online sources and review the registration details – the city/state/country in your address – against the details you provided at the outset of the process.
For Australia, that means the Australian Business Register or Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) .
For New Zealand, that means the New Zealand Companies Office Companies Register .
If your business is listed in any online third-party directories that display your business name and full street address, please submit it to our support team and they will be able to see if the CA can use that listing to satisfy the locality presence requirement.
If everything checks out, you’re good to go—you have satisfied this validation check.
However, if everything doesn’t match exactly, you’ll either need to update your listing so that the data matches or utilise another method to prove your locality presence. Fortunately, there are three other ways to satisfy this requirement.
- Alternative Methods:
- Official Registration Documents
- Dun & Bradstreet
- Legal Opinion Letter
Official Registration Documents
The CAs will accept documents from your local government (city, state or country) that verify the information you provided them during enrolment. This includes documents such as articles of incorporation, chartered licenses and DBA statements. As long as your registered address is visible, these should satisfy this requirement.
Dun & Bradstreet
Providing a comprehensive DUNS Credit Report will allow the CA to verify the physical address associated with your organisation. In Australia D&B operates as Hoovers. Dun & Bradstreet credit reports are incredibly useful for the purpose of validation as they can satisfy both this requirement and several others.
D-U-N-S Number Information
Legal Opinion Letter
A legal opinion letter, which is sometimes called a POL or professional opinion letter, is a document in which an accountant or attorney (they must be in good standing with the government regulatory body in your country or locality) verifies the legitimacy of your business. They can be used to satisfy four of the five requirements for an OV SSL Certificate.
- Example Comodo Legal Opinion Letter
- Example GeoTrust Legal Opinion Letter
- Example Symantec Legal Opinion Letter
- Example Thawte Legal Opinion Letter
You can use any of these methods to prove Locality Presence.