Secure government websites

To promote the safety of governmental websites, the open information security standard HTTPS will be made mandatory in 2019. This standard will ensure that visitors can check that they really are dealing with a government website, and that ill-intentioned parties cannot intercept data that is exchanged between the visitor and the website. Visitors are also shielded from spoofing (falsifying characteristics with the intention of temporarily assuming a false identity).

Public Key Infrastructure (PKI)

Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) for the government, or PKIoverheid or PKIo in short, facilitates reliable digital communication with, by and within the Dutch government. PKIoverheid is an infrastructure that is based on digital certificates. Public and private Trust Service Providers (TSP) within the PKIoverheid system realise a reliable issuing of PKIo certificates. The issuing of certificates takes place under strict conditions, supervised by the Ploicy Authority PKIoverheid, executed by Logius.

PKIo certificates have different applications: authentication of persons, website security, securely encrypted message exchange between servers, and digital signatures or hallmarks.

The Ministry of the Interior and Kingdom Relations has commissioned research into the usage of PKIoverheid certificates, including an analysis of possible measures to enhance this usage, for instance by making such usage mandatory. The report has been finished, and the results are known. You can find them here (in Dutch).