It wasn't a "audit" in the sense it is today, just a 'is this a real business?' 'not impersonating another business/person' kind of audit. Wasn't too difficult

It wasn't a "audit" in the sense it is today, just a 'is this a real business?' 'not impersonating another business/person' kind of audit. Wasn't too difficult to pass if you had a business set up. It was conducted by the company issuing the SSL certificate. Getting your initial cert could take anywhere from 24hours to a few days. Once you were set up renewals weren't a big deal. Nowadays its all automated of course, anybody can get a cert easily and thats great!