After Organization Authentication, the next requirement for an Organization Validated SSL certificate is proving Locality Presence. For this requirement, the Certificate Authority (CA) will try to verify that your organization or company has an active legal presence in its registered location.
What is Locality Presence
To fulfill the Locality Presence requirement, the Certificate Authority needs to verify that your organization has a legitimate physical presence within the country or state it's registered in. The CA doesn't need to verify the actual street address, just the city, state or country in the address.
Usually the CA will attempt to verify this information by searching an Online Government Database. They will look in the relevant database and check the registration details – the city/state/country in your address – against the details you provided at the outset of the process.
If everything checks out, you're good to go—you have satisfied this requirement.
However, if everything doesn't match exactly, you'll need to utilize another method to prove your locality presence.
Fortunately, there are three other ways to satisfy this requirement.
Additional Methods
- Official Registration Documents – The CA's will accept documents from your local government (city, state or country) that verify the information you provided them during enrollment. This includes documents such as articles of incorporation, chartered licenses and DBA statements.
- Dun & Bradstreet – Providing a comprehensive DUNS Credit Report will allow the CA to verify the physical address associated with your organization. Dun & Bradstreet credit reports are incredibly useful for the purpose of validation as they can satisfy both this requirement and the Organization Authentication requirement.
- 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) verifies the legitimacy of your business. They can be used to satisfy four of the five requirements for an OV SSL Certificate. You can find out more about Professional Opinion Letters here.
You can use any of these methods to prove Locality Presence.
