Today, there is no industry standard method to tell what level of background checking was performed for a given site before being issued an SSL certificate. Web users have been expected to understand the intricate and highly technical specifications of individual CAs in order to comprehend what a given CA does to verify the organisational information contained with the certificate.

In contrast, with High Assurance certificates, all participating CA's will follow standard vetting processes, so that consumers and other relying parties may rely on a High Assurance certificate from any participating CA to the same degree, without having to read and analyze every CA's policies and procedures for vetting.