International Maritime Organization mandates electronic documentation.

As the International Maritime Organization mandates electronic documentation, secure QR code is the only solution.

IMO – the International Maritime Organization – is an United Nations agency with responsibility for the safety and security of shipping and the prevention of marine and atmospheric pollution by ships.As a specialized agency of the United Nations, IMO is the global standard-setting authority for the safety, security and environmental performance of international shipping. Its main role is to create a regulatory framework for the shipping industry that is fair and effective, universally adopted and universally implemented.

Imagine these numbers

• International shipping transports more than 80 per cent of global trade

• Shipping is the most efficient and cost-effective method of international transportation

• It provides a dependable, low-cost means of transporting goods globally, facilitating commerce and helping to create prosperity among nations and peoples.

• The world relies on a safe, secure and efficient international shipping industry

This safety and regulatory framework developed and maintained by IMO. What it means is that IMO aims to reduce the administrative burden on across the world on administrations, port state control officials, ships’ crews and other stakeholders caused, amongst other reasons, by reliance on traditional paper and electronic certificates.

What is the problem with current certificate issuance?

Signed paper and electronic certificates, including printed versions of electronic certificates, have experienced many cases of fraud, due to which port State control has denied the validity of these certificates. This resulted in a lot of inconsistency in international transport, placing a huge burden to the master and crew, shipowner or operator, port State control officers, Administration and other stakeholders.

Such frauds are prevalent mostly in countries where there is an absence of a robust mechanism for the institutions to have authenticated certificates issued to the crew to be carried along. This can be addressed partly by having an electronic certificate security system, but that too is not foolproof, since all the countries do not have the same level of technical capability.

A good document security solution hence must

• Ensure the authenticity of each document and prevents tampering or forgery or even outright fakes being produced.

• This should be possible across electronic, physical certificates and photocopies of electronic certificates.

• This also means the seamless validation mechanism from any of the countries from a gold-standard in authentication.

How can the shipping industry prevent such occurrences in the future

Any document security solution consists of two parts -

1. Creating a document with relevant information that is secure and tamperproof, and
2. Ensuring such documents can be easily verified by a third party.

For the International Maritime Organization and shippers across the world, this standardised QR code solution can be embedded in every document/certificate issued. Secure QR codes can capture all these key details and would be an integral part of the certificate/document at the time of generation itself.

These signed paper, electronic certificates, including printed versions of electronic certificates, can thus be validated by any port state control. This will also bring inconsistency in international transport, relieving the burden to the master, crew, shipowner and operator, port State control officers, administration and other stakeholders.

How can you achieve success using Qryptal’s secure QR codes

1. Add a Secure QR Code with necessary details that require validation inside the QR code. This high security, tamperproof codes, can only be created by the issuing institution or maybe even the maritime authority in a country.
2. The QR code is machine-readable, and the information inside can be compared with the information on the document using a mobile app which can also verify that the specific institution has indeed issued the document. Information can also be compared with identification IDs like passports to highlight any tampering
3. Each QR code is unique for every certificate issued. The technology can be easily integrated with the existing infrastructure and can handle the necessary processing volumes.
4. It works for both physical and electronic documents.

Qryptal’s Secure QR codes are privacy-friendly with no dependency on databases and no sharing of customer sensitive information.

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