What is Trust-State Certification?
Trust-State Certification is a formal certification program governing the evaluation of systems, services, and digital infrastructure that depend on identity-bound credentials, authorization correctness, and verifiable trust-state transitions.
The program defines certification requirements, evaluation criteria, designation usage rules, and governance processes for determining whether submitted evidence artifacts satisfy the established standards.
Certification Scope
- Integrity of credential issuance, suspension, and revocation
- Authorization enforcement at the moment an action occurs
- Propagation and correctness of trust-state changes
- Generation of audit-ready verification evidence
Trust-State Lifecycle
- Trust-State Certified — Certification designation indicating that artifacts meet the criteria.
- Trust-State Verified — Runtime validation ensuring trust-state correctness at time of use.
- Trust-State Ledger — Historical, tamper-evident record of trust-state transitions.
Implementation Neutrality
Trust-State Certification is implementation-neutral and does not require the use of any specific vendor, platform, or system. Organizations may adopt the certification framework within their existing architectures.
Some systems may support Trust-State Certification requirements more natively than others, but no single implementation is required or endorsed.