The certificate authority
Issued by Certum
Klarseal sells code signing certificates. It does not issue them. Every certificate you buy here is issued by Certum — a certificate authority operated by Asseco Data Systems S.A. in Poland and listed on the EU Trusted List. This page says which parts of your order belong to Certum and which belong to us, because a reseller that is vague about that is a reseller you cannot hold to anything.
- Certum is the certificate authority
- Asseco Data Systems S.A., Poland
- On the EU Trusted List
- Klarseal is a reseller
Who Certum is
Certum is the trust services brand of Asseco Data Systems S.A., a Polish company that has been issuing certificates since 1998. Its root certificates are already in the Windows root store, which is the only reason a signature you make on your own laptop means anything on a stranger’s machine.
Certum appears on the EU Trusted List: the register each member state publishes of the trust service providers it supervises under eIDAS. That is a public, checkable statement by a national supervisory body, not a badge anyone can buy, and it is the claim worth checking about any certificate authority — including the ones behind our competitors.
Becoming a certificate authority takes years of audits and a root accepted into the operating-system trust stores. Klarseal has done none of that, and says so. What we are is a Norwegian company that sells Certum’s products, checks your application before it goes in, and answers the phone afterwards.
- Certificate authority
- Certum
- Legal operator
- Asseco Data Systems S.A. (Poland)
- Providing trust services since
- 1998
- Supervision
- EU Trusted List, under the eIDAS regulation
- Products Klarseal resells
- Certum Standard Code Signing in the Cloud, Certum EV Code Signing in the Cloud
- Key storage
- Certum hardware security module, reached through SimplySign
- Klarseal’s role
- Reseller. Klarseal is not a certificate authority.
- Seller of record
- Archi Systems AS, org. no. 916 683 332, Oslo
Who does what
Read the Certum column as the part of the timeline nobody at Klarseal can shorten. It is also why we never promise an issuance date.
| What happens | Who does it | What that means |
|---|---|---|
| Taking the order and choosing the product | Klarseal | You order from us. Archi Systems AS is the seller of record on the invoice. |
| Pre-checking the company against the registry | Klarseal | We read your record from Brønnøysundregistrene before you pay and tell you what would block validation. This is a pre-check, not the validation itself. |
| Payment, MVA and the invoice | Klarseal | The payment, the MVA line and the invoice are all ours. |
| Submitting the application to the certificate authority | Klarseal | We hand Certum a complete application. Completeness is the part we control. |
| Validating the company | Certum | Certum checks your organisation against the registry and against the CA/Browser Forum rules it is audited against. Only this check counts. |
| Asking for documents | Certum | Any document request comes from Certum and goes back to Certum. We can tell you what a request means; we never handle your documents on Certum’s behalf. |
| Checking the identity of the named person | Certum | Normally a short video session with Certum’s identity provider. Certum books and runs it. Klarseal is not in the room and cannot speed it up. |
| Generating and holding the private key | Certum | The key is created inside Certum’s hardware security module and never leaves it. Nobody at Klarseal can reach, copy or export it. |
| Issuing the certificate | Certum | Certum signs it with its own intermediate, which chains to Certum roots already trusted by Windows. That chain is why signed software works on a machine that has never heard of you — or of us. |
| Timestamping signatures | Certum | Certum runs the timestamp service, and it is included with the certificate. |
| Revoking a certificate | Certum | Only you or Certum can trigger a revocation. We can relay the request and explain the consequences; we cannot decide it, and neither can an assistant acting for you. |
| Order status, renewal warnings and support | Klarseal | One place to see where the order stands, a warning sixty days before expiry, and a person answering by email. |
| Refunding an order that cannot be issued | Klarseal | If Certum cannot issue, we raise a credit memo against the original invoice and refund the full amount through Mollie, to the payment method you used. |
Sources: Certum product documentation; the EU Trusted List entry for Asseco Data Systems S.A.; the CA/Browser Forum baseline requirements for code signing. Last reviewed 12 September 2026 by Luis Santos. Certum’s own site is at https://www.certum.eu/.
What this means in practice
Email from Certum is real email
During validation Certum may write to you directly about documents or the identity session. That is expected, not a phishing attempt. Forward it to us if you are unsure what it wants — but reply to Certum, not to us.
Your contract is with us
You buy from Archi Systems AS, a Norwegian company, on a Norwegian invoice with MVA, and you have a Norwegian counterparty for refunds and complaints. Your subscriber obligations for the certificate itself are Certum’s, and you agree to them during the order.
We cannot overrule a decision
If Certum declines an application or asks for one more document, that is the certificate authority exercising the judgement it is audited on. We will tell you exactly what was asked and why, and refund you in full if it cannot be resolved. We will not pretend we can appeal it.
A certificate from a CA you can look up
Certum validates and issues. We make the application complete before it gets there, and stay with it afterwards.