Register of certification authorities providing quality certificates

By virtue of section 32 of the Identification Act, FICORA maintains a public register of certification authorities providing quality certificates.

In Finland, quality certificates are provided by:

Trusted Service Status List (TSL)

The present list is the TSL implementation of Finland's "Trusted List of supervised/accredited Certification Service Providers”.

The Trusted List is providing information about the supervision/accreditation status of certification services from Certification Service Providers (CSPs) who are supervised/accredited by Finland for compliance with the relevant provisions of Directive 1999/93/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 13 December 1999 on a Community framework for electronic signatures.

The Trusted List aims at:

• listing and providing reliable information on the supervision/accreditation status of certification services from Certification Service Providers, who are supervised/accredited by Finland for compliance with the relevant provisions laid down in Directive 1999/93/EC;
• facilitating the validation of electronic signatures supported by those listed supervised/accredited certification services from the listed CSPs.
  

The Trusted List of a Member State provides a minimum of information on supervised/accredited CSPs issuing Qualified Certificates in accordance with the provisions laid down in Directive 1999/93/EC (Art. 3.3, 3.2 and Art. 7.1(a)), including information on the QC supporting the electronic signature.

The CSPs issuing Qualified Certificates (QCs) listed here are supervised by Finland and may also be accredited for compliance with the provisions laid down in Directive 1999/93/EC, including with the requirements of Annex I (requirements for QCs), and those of Annex II (requirements for CSPs issuing QCs). The applicable ‘supervision’ system (respectively ‘voluntary accreditation’ system) is defined and must meet the relevant requirements of Directive 1999/93/EC, in particular those laid down in Art. 3.3, Art. 8.1, Art. 11 (respectively, Art.2.13, Art. 3.2, Art 7.1(a), Art. 8.1, Art. 11)

Supervision

FICORA is the National Regulatory Authority according to the Act on Strong Electronic Identification and Electronic Signatures.

If a Certificate Service Provider would like to issue qualified certificates, the CSP has to use a specific form and submit it and some additional information about itself to FICORA. There is no approval process so once the CSP has sent the form it can start to issue qualified certificates.

FICORA supervises that qualified certificates are provided in Finland in compliance with the Act on strong electronic identification and electronic signatures and orders issued under it and that the qualified certificates and systems of qualified certificates comply with the provisions mentioned above. The supervision involves, among other things, annual inspections of qualified certificate operations.

The regulations concerning Qualified Certificates in the Finnish Act on Strong Electronic Identification and Electronic Signatures are a close transposition of the European Directive 1999/93/EC. Qualified certificates in Finland are always issued to natural persons.

TSL implementation of the Trusted List [XML, 24 KB]

A Human Readable form of the TSL implementations of the Trusted List [PDF, 164 KB]