Phishing has increased in the last few months according to APACS, a UK association dedicated to the payment services industry, with latest statistics showing that over 10,000 incidents were reported in Q1 2008. This is a 200 percent increase over the same period in 2007, says the group.

An EV SSL Certificate displays easily understood visual cues in enabled high-security browsers to provide tangible assurance of a site’s authenticity. The address bar turns green, a lock icon appears next to the address and a new field appears to the right of the URL in the high-security browser. This field contains the name of the organization that owns the site, which in this case will be HSBC, as well as the security provider that issued the certificate.

"As e-criminals grow more sophisticated, financial services leaders like HSBC must always remain a step ahead to ensure the security and trust of our customers," says Barry Jones, senior manager, Group IT Security at HSBC. "Deploying VeriSign Extended Validation SSL Certificates will allow us to send an instantly recognizable signal - the reassuring green bar - to our online banking customers, confirming that any personal information they supply on that page will go directly to HSBC and no one else. In the often unsettling landscape of today’s Internet, VeriSign EV SSL protection helps us provide a safe haven for our customers."

VeriSign says it is one of the most respected and trusted SSL authorities on the Web and provides EV SSL certificates to more than 3,000 Internet domains, representing more than 75 percent of the entire EV SSL certificate market worldwide. The company says it was also one of the first to offer standardized EV SSL certificates in December 2006.

Last month, VeriSign published its Q4 2007 Domain Name Industry Brief, which reveals that the Internet grew by nearly 33 million domain names in 2007.