UK banking group HSBC is deploying extended validation secure socket layer (EV) SSL certificates to help its online customers identify fake sites and block pfishers. The company has tapped California-based digital security firm VeriSign to provide this extra layer of security.

(EV) SSL certificates cause the URL address bar to turn green when a site is authentic. In the VeriSign version, a lock also appears next to the address and a new field containing HSBC’s and VeriSign’s names appears to the right of the URL.

“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 information they supply on that page will go directly to HSBC and no one else,” says Barry Jones, senior manager, group IT security for HSBC.

The (EV) SSL certificate standard was created by the CA/Browser Forum, a consortium of certificate authorities (CAs) and browser providers including VeriSign and Microsoft. A joint VeriSign-Microsoft data sheet calls (EV) SSL certificates “the most significant advance for the World Wide Web’s secure backbone in over a decade.” VeriSign and Microsoft have also partnered together on other projects, such as Open ID and CardSpace.

HSBC’s announcement came one week after PayPal, the online payments subsidiary of electronic auction house eBay, called for wider take-up of (EV) SSL. Older browsers do not support the technology. Newer versions of Internet Explorer and Firefox support (EV) SSL, but Safari, Apple’s browser, does not.

The popularity of pfishing seems to be on the rise, with UK payments association Apacs reporting a 200 percent jump in the number of attacks in the first quarter of 2008.

VeriSign is the SSL certificates provider for more than 93 percent of the Fortune 500 companies and the world’s 40 largest banks.