France Cybersecurity Secures Its Label Certificates with Visible Digital Seals

The Label France Cybersecurity is France's mark of excellence for cybersecurity products and services. Awarded to companies that design, develop, and operate their solutions on French soil, it signals quality and trust to clients worldwide. But what good is a label of trust if the certificate itself can be forged?

That is why France Cybersecurity now secures the attestations it delivers to its labelled companies with Visible Digital Seal (VDS) technology — ensuring that every label certificate is as tamper-proof as the solutions it endorses.

What Is the Label France Cybersecurity?

Established in 2015 under the Nouvelle France Industrielle programme, the Label France Cybersecurity is governed by a tripartite structure bringing together user representatives, industry stakeholders, and relevant state services — including the ANSSI (France's national cybersecurity agency).

The label is awarded to:

• Hardware and software products
• Managed security services
• Consulting and engineering services

Each labelled offer goes through a rigorous evaluation by an independent third-party instructor, followed by a decision from the awarding committee. The entire process, from application to notification, is completed within 90 days. Labels are valid for one year and must be renewed annually.

With dozens of companies and solutions labelled each year, the volume of certificates in circulation is significant — and so is the risk of fraud. A forged France Cybersecurity attestation could allow a company to falsely claim endorsement, misleading clients and damaging the label's credibility.

Why Secure Label Certificates with VDS?

The Forgery Risk

A label certificate is, at its core, a proof of status — much like a diploma or a professional accreditation. In a digital world, these documents circulate as PDFs, are printed for display at trade shows, and are shared with clients and partners. Without cryptographic protection, anyone with basic graphic design skills could produce a convincing fake.

The VDS Solution

By embedding a Visible Digital Seal on every label attestation, France Cybersecurity ensures that:

1. Authenticity is provable — The VDS contains a cryptographic signature created with France Cybersecurity's private key. Any recipient can verify that the certificate was genuinely issued by France Cybersecurity and not fabricated by a third party.
2. Integrity is guaranteed — The essential data of the certificate (company name, labelled solution, award date, validity period) is encoded in the seal. Any modification — even a single character — breaks the signature.
3. Verification is instant — Anyone with a VDS-compatible reader app — such as Otentik Codes Reader — can scan the seal on the printed or digital certificate and immediately confirm its validity.
4. No database dependency — Verification requires no live database query. Trust information (certificates, trust lists, manifests) is downloaded once and cached locally on the device, enabling subsequent verifications to work fully offline, without calling any server or web portal.

How It Works in Practice

When a company receives its France Cybersecurity label, the attestation — whether delivered as a printed document or a digital PDF — bears a 2D barcode (DataMatrix or QR code) — though VDS is carrier-agnostic and also supports NFC or URL-based delivery — that constitutes the Visible Digital Seal.

This barcode encodes:

• The identity of the issuer (France Cybersecurity / its governing body)
• The labelled company name
• The labelled solution or service
• The date of issuance and validity period
• A digital signature binding all of the above

A client, partner, or prospect wanting to verify the certificate simply:

1. Opens a VDS verification app (e.g. Otentik Codes Reader)
2. Scans the barcode
3. Gets an instant result: valid (green) or invalid (red)

If the certificate has been altered, photocopied with modifications, or fabricated from scratch, the signature check fails — immediately and unambiguously.

A Natural Fit for the Cybersecurity Ecosystem

There is a certain elegance in a cybersecurity label protecting its own certificates with state-of-the-art cryptographic technology. It demonstrates that France Cybersecurity practises what it preaches: if you're going to certify cybersecurity solutions, your own processes should embody the highest security standards.

The choice of VDS technology is also consistent with the broader French ecosystem:

• The 2D-Doc standard, developed by France's national agency for secure documents (ANTS / France Titres), was the first interoperable implementation of VDS and is already used to secure national identity cards, proof-of-residence documents, and other official certificates.
• The AIGCEV / VDSIC governance framework, with deep roots in the French document security ecosystem, ensures international interoperability and trust management.
• The ISO 22376:2023 standard codifies VDS deployment requirements at the international level.

By adopting VDS, France Cybersecurity joins a growing number of French and international organisations — from the Ordre des Experts-Comptables with its Expert-ID app to Côte d'Ivoire's ONECI — that use Visible Digital Seals to protect high-value documents.

Benefits for Labelled Companies

For companies that hold the France Cybersecurity label, the VDS-secured attestation adds tangible value:

• Credibility — Clients and prospects can independently verify the label, strengthening trust.
• Protection against imposters — No competitor or malicious actor can credibly forge the attestation.
• International recognition — Because the VDS conforms to international standards and is verifiable through the Otentik Trust Network, the certificate carries weight beyond French borders.
• Simplicity — No special hardware or registration is required to verify the certificate. A free smartphone app is all it takes.

A Signal for the Industry

France Cybersecurity's decision to secure its label certificates with VDS technology sends a clear message to the industry: document security is not optional, even — especially — for organisations that define trust.

As the number of cybersecurity labels, certifications, and accreditations continues to grow worldwide, the question of how to protect the certificates themselves becomes increasingly important. VDS provides an elegant, standards-based answer.