Digital security specialist Trustis has introduced a new SSL-server certificate service exclusively for the NHS. It is designed to overcome the problems of payment for certificates and the provision of evidence such as company registration numbers, by allowing any organisation registered with the NHS Address Registration Service to apply for a certificate using their NHS organisation code.

“Most digital certificate services assume that every organisation is the same and can provide any type of evidence required”, explained Trustis MD Chris Swinbank. “This certainly does not apply to most public bodies. Because Trustis builds every PKI to order, we can optimise it for its community of users. In this case we have been able to utilise information unique to the NHS to make getting a certificate a lot simpler.

Suppliers also tend to want payment before issuing a certificate and this means using a credit card. Organisations don’t usually have credit cards that can be used for this type of purchase and employees often end up using their own. We have developed a system that allows a certificate to be supplied with a purchase order, which is simpler and makes the process a lot faster; we will invoice the organisation in slower time.”

The service operates using Certificate Factory, a tScheme-approved and BS7799-accredited certificate-manufacturing service run from the company’s high-security Trust Service Centre. One, two and three-year certificates are available singly or in bulk and can be purchased online.