The value of certification

The certification offered by Stardome is fully compliant with the Italian (Digital Administration Code) and European (eIDAS) regulations regarding digital documentation. The level of reliability guaranteed by this solution is considered even higher than that of a handwritten signature. In fact, while the apparent signer of an analog document can disavow their own signature and the burden of proof falls on the other party, in the case of the digital signature its authenticity is taken for granted and must be disproven by the disowning party.

The ability to automatically certify data emitted from any source, such as stationary sensors, measuring equipment, cameras, or any other data collection and sending device, means that each of these data has full legal value as to its origin, i.e., where it was processed and the precise point in time when this process occurred. This has very strong implications for the value of the data itself, in several key areas:

• It allows a phenomenon to be documented exactly over time (e.g., to define how fast a vehicle was going immediately before an accident) or to be located with precision and absolute validity (e.g., to document that a camera’s footage refers to a certain moment).
• Attributes a specific piece of data to a specific source, enabling security control based on mapping of sources (e.g., in a dispersed system with many sources, such as a smart city or when monitoring an energy or communications infrastructure or network), to ensure that there are no “abusive” sources entering false or manipulated data and that all authorized ones transmit as intended.
• Provides a constantly updated map of the different data sources, which allows the origin of each data item to be traced immediately and, therefore, to identify and isolate critical elements or aberrant data, to identify critical issues or possible glitches.
• The certification of the origin with digital signature value also makes the data directly employable in sensitive and highly regulated procedures, such as reporting, auditing, budgeting or the issuance of quality and compliance certificates.
• Since the data is certified directly at the source, any possible latency between issuance and certification is eliminated, erasing and wiggle room for intrusion or tampering.
• Satellite certification, in addition to a very high level of inherent robustness, implements an autonomous and automatic CA (certifying authority) system, which operates in a completely trustless manner, meaning that it does not rely on the reliability of external certifiers.
• Certification is done through hardware boards integrated directly at the data source. This allows complete automation of the entire process and the ability to handle large masses of data in a completely reliable manner, with maximum scalability.

Possible areas of application

All these features suggest the adoption of the Stardome solution for domains with numerous data sources, which may be dispersed over a very large area or moving. This solution is especially suited when these data or the processes enabled by them are particularly sensitive, exposed to attacks or potentially usable in contexts that require legal value or otherwise high reliability. Examples of these areas may include:

• Infrastructure management, from the construction and site monitoring phase to utilization and control of the state of the works, traffic and environmental impact.
• Management of logistics fleets and cargo loading and unloading facilities, including the very large and complex ones (e.g., ports, freight villages).
• Smart city, for all processes from environmental monitoring to security, from traffic and mobility management to smart routing, from energy and lighting networks to access control.
• Energy or other utility distribution and communication networks to monitor the efficiency of different sectors, service distribution and the status of connected devices.
• Local emergency management, to monitor the status of the affected area, restoration of basic functions, relief efforts and aid distribution,
• Connectivity satellite activities, IoT networks, terrestrial observation, to certify collected data and functionality of networks,
• Control of industrial plants and distribution lines, including over large distances and dimensions (e.g., oil & gas).
• Supply chain certification of logistics cargoes, e.g., for monitoring sensitive goods even in limited connectivity contexts (e.g., maritime transport).