Secure Credentials - QEAAs
What are Qualified Electronic Attributes of Attestations?
Qualified Electronic Attestations of Attributes (QEAA) are verifiable digital credentials, which are proving the trustworthiness of a characteristic of a natural or legal person. They provide a trustworthy basis with additional security and liability to guarantee a high degree of trust. This includes, for example, digital driving licences, addresses, tax data, educational certificates or banking information.
As they have the equivalent legal effect of paper based attestation, QEAAs must be provided by a Qualified Trust Service Providers (QTSPs) to ensure the adherence to predefined high-trust mechanism. QTSPs are trust service providers that have been granted qualified status by the supervisory authority of the respective member state. The EU provides a QTSP dashboard illustrating all 270 certified entities in Europe. They provide trust services such as the qualified creation and certification of electronic signatures, seals or timestamps in accordance with the eIDAS regulation.
Benefits for QTSPs using the Lissi Connector
In combination with the European Digital Identity Wallet(EUDI-Wallet), qualified attestations have the potential to gradually convert and securely store all relevant certificates, documents or records in digital format. This streamlines administrative procedures, which currently rely heavily on original documents or notarised copies in paper form. With regulated and trusted documents such as QEAAs processes can be faster, more efficient and improve security in an organisation. The use of QEAAs for processes also has the benefit of risk reduction, as they have a high level of assurance.
As EUDI-Wallet and QEAAs standards will be recognised and mandated for acceptance across European member states, organisations can be certain that they are fulfilling regulatory requirements. Additionally, this allows for the exploration of new business models and market opportunities.
Seal EAAs with your existing infrastructure to create QEAAs
Create EAAs and issue QEAAs with the Lissi Connector to an EUDI-Wallet
Request the PID for identification purposes from EUDI-Wallets
Be an early adopter and secure market share early on
Easily issue and verify secure credentials (QEAAs)
Issuance and verification
eIDAS will make it possible for official documents such as university degrees to be issued in electronic form. This means, for example, that a master's student at a university can receive proof of their degree directly in their EUDI wallet after graduating. Subsequent issuance based on register data at the university is also possible. In both scenarios, the certificate is issued either via the university directly or a QTSP. In the following the issuance via a QTSP is described.
Identification and verification
The QTSP identifies the user on the basis of the Person Identification Data (PID) provided by the EUDI-Wallet and validates the attestation by making a request to the respective education institution.
Validation
The electronic education attestation is cryptographically secured and validated by the QTSP using an electronic seal to sign a credential, resulting in the creation of a QEAA.
Issuance
The QEAA is then issued to the user's EUDI-Wallet via an EUDI-Wallet Connector software, such as the Lissi EUDI-Wallet Connector.
Usage and presentation
Finally, the relying party, to which the user wishes to apply as a software engineer, sends a request for the needed attributes contained in the QEAA to the user's EUDI-Wallet via a connector software. The wallet user can present the QEAA and verify that he or she has a degree in information technology.
Revocation & Expiration
An Electronic Attestation of Attributes (QEAA) is valid, until one of these events occur:
The EAA is deleted by the user, to whom it was issued.
The EAA expires, on the basis of the EAAs validity end date.
The attestation is revoked when the provider, in this case the QTSP, takes action to revoke it or when a third party notifies the provider of the need for revocation.
eIDAS 2 credentials
EUDI-Wallet conform
EU-wide standardisation
Support selective disclosure
Attributes
Attributes that require a moderate trust level
Non-identification attributes, that require high trust level
Identification attributes of a person
Security
Moderate security
High level of security and assurance
Highest level of security and assurance
Data source
Derived from reliable source in the attributes domain
Derived from an authentic source
Authentic source, which is authorised by a member state
Validated by
Validated by primary instance of the attribute
Validated by qualified trust service provider
Validated by qualified trust service provider
Basis for
All services that only need moderate trust levels
Basis for all high trust services outside the identification scope
Basis for all identification services
Use cases
Employee card, student-IDs or customer cards
Tax data, mobile driver licence
Identification (Know-your-customer)