Document & Email Verification API

What You Can Verify

Certidox verification is built around four complementary elements:

How Verification Fits into Your Workflow

The Verification API is designed to bring checks into the applications employees already use, without requiring every verification to begin with a manual QR code scan.

1. A document or email arrives. Your application receives or accesses an item associated with a Certidox certification record.
2. Your system requests verification. The intended integration would request certification information within the normal business workflow.
3. Certification information is reviewed. The workflow can examine the recorded certifier, certification date and status, and compare the received content with the certified reference.
4. Your organization decides how to proceed. Its own rules determine whether to act, request a review or stop a process.

Integration details will depend on the final technical specification and the organization's environment.

Verification for Documents and Emails

Certified documents

Certidox supports digital and printed documents, originals and copies. A readable QR code provides access to the certification record and the fixed certified reference.

For printed or scanned copies, verification still requires comparing the presented content with the certified reference. Paper copies cannot have the same file-level fingerprint as their source PDF.

Certified emails

For Certidox-certified emails, an integration is intended to make recorded sender and recipient information, certification details, certified message content and current status available for verification.

Email certification does not, by itself, establish delivery, receipt or reading. It also does not prove the content of attachments that are not included in the certified reference.

Current Status Matters

The certified content remains fixed, but its certification status can change after distribution.

The organization that certified a document may revoke or supersede its certification. The sender of a Certidox-certified email can revoke that email's certification.

An application incorporating verification should check the live certification status when the information is about to be relied upon, rather than reuse an earlier result.

Certidox separately supports optional real-time notifications to previous verifiers when a certification status changes. These alerts are not an automatic API subscription.

Confidential by Design

Certidox's confidentiality architecture does not require readable certified content to be stored on Certidox servers.

Documents are encrypted on the certifier's computer. Outgoing emails are encrypted by the organization's Certidox Mail Proxy Server.

No readable document or email content is processed or stored on Certidox servers. No decryption keys are stored there.

Any integration should also follow the organization's access-control and data-protection policies when handling received documents, emails and verification information.

API and Independent Verification Bundles

These two approaches are complementary, but their purposes are different.

A downloaded bundle does not establish live certification status while offline. An API status check does not replace independently validating historical cryptographic evidence.

Relevant Certidox verification components are open source and can be independently examined and audited.

Planning an Integration

Potential uses include document intake, contract review, purchase-order checks, financial instruction verification and internal compliance workflows. These are integration scenarios, not prebuilt integrations.

1. Identify verification points. Decide which business actions require certification checks before relying on information.
2. Define exception handling. Decide what happens when content differs from the certified reference, the status is revoked or verification cannot be completed.
3. Discuss integration requirements. Review the target environment, required verification results and technical constraints with Certidox.

Frequently Asked Questions

Discuss an API Integration

Tell Certidox where your organization needs to verify documents or emails. Discuss the required checks and how they could fit into your existing business applications.