Changes in certification hierarchy during 2024

Dear customer,

During the year 2024, SK will implement a new certification authority (CA) hierarchy.

The current Estonian Certification Centre Root CA (EECCRCA) will be replaced with new root CA (ROOT G1), together with intermediate certificates.

The changes ahead in SK Public Key Infrastructure (PKI), are related with the transition to the new root and intermediate certificates.

In order to make the implementation of changes as convenient as possible for all the PKI ecosystem, we have divided changes into several milestones for taking new CA's into use.

Changes will affect e-services, applications and information systems using directly or indirectly certificates issued to Organisations, Smart-ID and Mobile-ID, but not limited to:

  • National data exchange layer X-road (security servers owners) – X-road ecosystem uses eSeal and Authentication certificates
  • validation & signing solution providers
  • solutions that use custom trust store for certificates instead of EU Trusted List (https://sr.riik.ee/en.html)

Important dates regards switching CAs for services are:

  • Organisation certificates (ORG 2021E):
    • TEST environment: 12.03.2024
    • PRODUCTION environment: 09.04.2024
  • Mobile-ID (EID-Q 2021E)
    • Q2-Q3
  • Smart-ID (EID-Q 2024E, EID-NQ 2021E)
    • Q3-Q4

Exact dates for Mobile-ID and Smart-ID CAs to be taken into use will be specified in further notifications.

The timeline for other CAs transition is presented in Github link below.
We have put together a set of Q&A sections in our new PKI Github repository, where all details from technical to non-technical have been described.
Link: https://github.com/SK-EID/PKI/wiki/Certification-Hierarchy#changes-in-certification-hierarchy

The transition to a new PKI hierarchy and using more secure key lengths adds more security and helps to preserve the integrity in the long term. Also moving to a new PKI is inevitable due expiration of EECCRCA root certificate in 2030.

Please be also advised that we will be performing a regular redundancy testing of SK ID Solutions' services between different data centers on 14.03.2024 from 23:00 until 15.03.2024 02:00 EET.
The test will cause momentary disruptions in SK services after 23:00.

Please let our support know if you if you have any questions: [email protected]

SK ID Solutions AS
Ph: +372 610 1880