Consortium of ecsec, Spherity, and msg won the implementation project of the Gaia-X Notarization API

The Gaia-X Notarization API in detail

The master data attestation of companies will increase the trust in the Gaia-X ecosystem. It will allow users to verify the origin of information and its integrity. A large number of industry use cases will benefit from the new technology, for example:

• creation of authorization credentials such as employment, membership, or company role,
• exchanging bank details in a trusted way between buyers and sellers,
• digitize product and company certifications, such as Gaia-X labels or ISO certifications,
• showing law compliance, e.g. for the US DSCSA or the German Digital Supply Chain Act.,
• issuing product information for the upcoming digital product passports.

More technically speaking the Notarization API will:

• transform GAIA-X participants’ certificates from classic formats to digital verifiable credential formats, along with digital signatures,
• digitize GAIA-X participants’ and associated master data (e.g., name, address, tax identification number, bank details, company registration and identification number etc.),
• allowing organizations creating and using DIDs for their company, IOT devices, products and services,
• bridging SSI with eIDAS regulation for business owners (e.g., using eID), 
• allowing organizations to act as trust anchors (e.g., Governments, Gaia-X AISBL, etc.).

„We are proud to design and implement a core component for sustainable European cloud infrastructure”, says Steffen Schwalm, Principal Business Consultant at msg security advisors: “With the notarization API we develop a core building block for proven and secure SSI as the key for trustworthy data exchange and utilization in Gaia-X.”

“The implementation of the Gaia-X Federation Services will bring a strong shift towards decentralized technologies and its application in industry use cases. Decentralized identities will be used for companies, products, IOT devices and also humans to digitize the industry in general and supply chain processes in particular.” says Carsten Stöcker, Founder of Spherity.

The Notarization API is a contribution to Gaia-X that enables secure and compliant issuance of verifiable credentials in combination with a trust chain to a well-known super notary acting as a root-of-trust for the notarization services. This solution will be implemented in a hybrid approach by means of integration with X.509 based Public-Key Infrastructures. This technology will lay the foundation for general purpose Notarization services that can issue an endless variety of verifiable credentials for citizens, organizations, machines, algorithms, or supply chain events.

About Gaia-X
The Gaia-X project was initiated with the objective of creating a next generation of European data infrastructure: a secure, federated system that meets the highest standards of digital sovereignty while promoting innovation. This project is the cradle of an open, transparent digital ecosystem, where data and services can be made available, collated, and shared in an environment of trust. Representatives from several European countries and further international partners are currently involved in the project and the Gaia-X is in continuous exchange with the European Commission.

About msg
msg is an independent, international group of companies with more than 9,000 employees worldwide. It is represented in 28 countries and supports its customers in their digital transformation. Founded in 1980, the consulting and IT company‘s range of services includes strategic business consulting and end-to-end solutions for the industries automotive, banking, consumer products, food, healthcare, insurance, life science & chemicals, manufacturing, public sector, telecommunications, travel & logistics and utilities. Within the group, independent companies cover the wide variety of industry and topic-based competence. msg systems ag forms the core of the company group.

About Spherity
Spherity is a German decentralized digital identity software provider, bringing secure identities to enterprises, machines, products, data and even algorithms. We provide the enabling technology to digitize and automate compliance processes in highly-regulated technical sectors. Our offered products empower cyber security, efficiency, and data interoperability among digital value chains. Spherity is certified according to the information security standard ISO 27001.

Used source:

• https://www.gxfs.de/federation-services/identity-trust/notarization-api/
• https://www.gxfs.de/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/SRS_GXFS_CP_NOTAR.pdf