Certificates are everywhere and apply to individuals, to organisations, as well as to objects or things.
Examples of certificates issued to individuals: birth certificate, school qualifications, university qualifications, sports achievements, membership, professional accreditation, insurance, driving license, training course attendance, continuous professional development, marriage certificate, death certificate.
Examples of certificates issued to organisations: certificate of incorporation, insurance, health and safety, information assurance, industry accreditation, corporate membership, industry awards, tax certificate.
Examples of certificates issued to things: MOT for cars, road tax for cars, energy performance certificate (EPC) for buildings, proof of origin for fine wines, warranty for general products, etc
Managing certificates is always a challenge, as they may expire, become invalid, or require supporting credentials to stay in force. This problem was the primary motivation for creating BockMark Registry; an intuitive, feature-rich platform for the management of credentials.
Moreover, the ecosystem comprises three pillars: the issuer of certificates (for example the certification or accreditation body managing a scheme), the recipient (be that an individual, an organisation or a thing), and importantly the inspector who wishes to check a certificate and keep on record that they performed appropriate due diligence or duty of care about a contractor, supplier or customer.
Hence, BlockMark Registry has been designed so that an entity can easily switch roles as appropriate to issue, receive or inspect certificates as an individual, a staff member of one or more organisations, and/or as a custodian of one or more things.
Finally, the platform is designed to bring additional benefits of digital certificates to reduce management overhead, reduce fraud, increase visibility, and provide valuable insights.
As an issuer: Manage one or more certification schemes from which to issue digital certificates with custom messages and email status monitoring. Include additional features such as smart badges and printable pdfs derived from data-merging docx templates. Renew certificates when appropriate, monitor their usage, and suspend or revoke when necessary.
As a recipient: Receive and manage your certificates, keeping track of any upcoming expiry dates. Share your digital certificate on your profile, print the pdf for your wall, and embed smart badges on your website or email signature for dynamic updating. You can also upload a certificate you've received from elsewhere to help you keep track of it, manage it, and share it.
As an inspector: View another certificate, find out about the issuer and the certification scheme, and then record its status in your account. This will help you maintain records of any certificates you need to monitor in your supply chain, your customers or your staff.
To clarify the range of words we use on our platform and within this knowledge base.
Certificate: includes a ticket (certificate for travel or entry) and a badge / logo / mark (a visual cue for a certificate). A certificate indicates having a credential, qualification, achievement, quality, privilege, or right of entitlement. Such certificates are issued / awarded / given. Certificates have traditionally been printed on paper or parchment, but more recently appear as pdf documents or in other digital formats.
Certification scheme: describes the characteristics or template from which certificates are issued; ensuring the right information is recorded and displayed, and that each certificate that is issued is consistent (for example with scope, duration, wording and branding).
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Self-certified: the act of stating that you meet the criteria for a certificate by satisfying all of its prerequisites or requirements. This is different from being examined independently.
Self-uploaded: uploading the image or copy of an off-platform certificate and stating it is valid.
Self-presentation: presenting a certificate back to an issuer to show it is still valid. Examples include an entry ticket or membership card that you show back to the issuer to enter their premises.
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Issuer: Accreditation Body / AB (usually owns / manages / audits the certification scheme), Certification Body / CB (examines / moderates and/or issues certificates if not done by the AB).
Recipient: Accredited Entity / Certified Entity. Note that an individual (or a particular email address) may receive a certificate on behalf of another individual (for example as parent / guardian of a child, as an employee / representative of an organisation, or as the owner / stakeholder / custodian of a thing / object.
Inspector: A viewer of a certificate who is attempting to verify that it is valid and in force.
You might be surprised how many fake and doctored certificates are in circulation. Despite the importance of credentials, it can be very difficult to check their authenticity and validity. This is because the issuer may be hard to contact or information about a particular scheme may be limited. Often there is no convenient central point of contact or directory. Added to this, some credentials and claims are left up (on websites, email footers, letterheads and walls) when they have expired or are no longer valid. This misrepresentation may occur by mistake because someone has forgotten to keep things up to date. Our aim is for BlockMark Regsitry to help mitigate these problems, making it harder for fraudulant, outdated or invalid certificates to be accepted.
As a result, those that invest in training, membership, compliance, insurance and accreditation should rightfully reap the rewards.
Certificates are important documents that are used at various times to demonstrate a level of particular attainment or status. Sometimes this may be regarded as relatively trivial (like the membership of a local book club), but often it is something important (such as a professional qualification, an industry accreditation, or public liability insurance).
Because of this, certificates that have been issued cannot just be arbitrarily adjusted, edited or deleted. If they have been seen, and therefore relied upon, this is an important matter of record. For this reason, the platform has certain restrictions on how data can be removed and there are important considerations around privacy, general data protection and the retention of data for legal purposes.
Our philosophy is to treat information securely by design, to be clear where and how data is collected and used, and to explain why. Currently we operate BlockMark Registry on the Google Cloud Platform (GCP) within London-based infrastructure.