An Extended Validation Certificate ( EV ) is a certificate conforming
to X.509 that proves the legal entity of the owner and is signed by a
certificate authority key that can issue EV certificates. EV certificates can
be used in the same manner as any other X.509 certificates, including securing
web communications with HTTPS and signing software and documents. Unlike
domain-validated certificates and organization-validation certificates, EV
certificates can be issued only by a subset of certificate authorities (CAs)
and require verification of the requesting entity's legal identity before
certificate issuance.