The Challenge
The Ministry needed to enable secure verification of e-passport data by law enforcement and border control officers. At the same time, the PKI platform had to scale to support future regulatory and operational use cases. Transparency and control was essential, ruling out proprietary, black-box solutions.
All of the content on the e-passport chips must be protected. We needed to enable law enforcement, border control, and police officers to verify information. So, we identified PKI as a way to accomplish this.”
-
Supporting new identity verification needs
E-passports required secure, cryptographic validation of chip data in the field.
-
Scalability for emerging use cases
The team anticipated growing PKI requirements beyond the initial passport project.
-
High assurance requirements for national infrastructure
Government PKI had to support mission-critical systems where outages or errors were especially critical.
The Solution
Open, Scalable PKI for Government
The Ministry selected Keyfactor EJBCA after recommendations from other European government agencies and hands-on workshops. Starting with the community edition, the team benefited from EJBCA’s open source foundation and transparency. As use cases expanded and became more critical, the Ministry transitioned to EJBCA Enterprise to ensure long-term reliability and support.
EJBCA works so well for us because we can use it every way we want. We’ve had such a positive experience using the product because it is truly transparent.”
EJBCA now supports multiple domain CAs and mutually authenticated services within the Ministry’s own data center.
Business Impact
Over nearly 15 years, the Ministry of Justice has built a highly reliable and scalable PKI platform using EJBCA. The solution supports critical national and EU-wide initiatives, including e-passports, visas, internal government services, and digital health certificates. Transparency and flexibility allow the team to adapt quickly to new regulations and requirements without sacrificing security.
-
National-scale identity verification
Law enforcement and border control can securely validate digital documents in real time.
-
PKI center of excellence
The Ministry developed deep PKI expertise and now trains officers and policymakers across the EU.
-
Long-term agility and trust
Open, scalable PKI enables continuous expansion without reliance on proprietary systems.
“Whenever we ask [Keyfactor] if it is possible to support new use cases, it always is.”
