MAmappu·Feb 7, 2025
Originally OV allowed file-based certificates (pkcs12) and EV required an HSM. But since June 2023, now file-based certificates are no longer allowed[1], you need to certify that your CSR comes from an HSM (just paperwork, nothing technical) as part of the issuance request.
Smartscreen, AV warnings, etc use a reputation-based system. No amount of money makes you truly immune from warnings, but paying for EV does give you a higher default reputation. Since there is no longer any file-vs-HSM distinction between EV and OV, it is simply a cost for more default reputation. Any business will pay it easily.
(My prediction is that OV/EV will consolidate to a single offering, in the same way that EV for web SSL has been phased-out.)
Azure Trusted Signing is an all-in-one service that creates keys, purchases the certificate, and hosts the HSM for y
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ou. It's still OK to do all these things separately e.g. purchase the cert from Globalsign and use Azure Key Vault as the HSM (you have to pay for the 5 USD/mo service for the larger key size, instead of the cheap one).
ATS is still somewhat new and has not fed into toolchains like https://github.com/sassoftware/relic yet. Although https://github.com/ebourg/jsign does support it.
1. https://knowledge.digicert.com/alerts/code-signing-changes-i...