Certifications Are the Basis for Trust

The DFN Association supports participating institutions in science, research, and education with services in its X-WiN research network. In the interest ensuring their interruption-free, secure use, our central DFN services are regularly certified.

Our successfully certified DFN Services:

When it comes to processing emails, organizations must keep data security and legal questions in mind in addition to organizational and technical aspects. These are only some of the myriad considerations when operating a trustworthy, legally sound email service. The DFN Association offers members of the X-WiN research network the community-organized email service, DFN-MailSupport. With MailSupport, participating institutions can count on their organizations receiving significantly fewer unwanted, malicious emails.

Another advantage: because the DFN Association already certifies its email service, it saves individual institutions time by not having to get their own email services certified. DFN MailSupport is certified as part of the ISO 27001 framework, the foundation for IT baseline security. The service received certification from the BSI in early 2021 and is valid until March, 2024.

The Data Center Infrastructure Information Network was recently certified by ISO 27001 on the basis of IT security, including its standardized basic services.

For sever and application operations, the DFN Association has rented space in three data centers—in Berlin, Hannover, and Erlangen—and operates a cabinet system at each location. The information network provides this data center infrastructure, including standardized basic services, available to subject-specific applications operated by the DFN Association. These can be used modularly. The advantage? These can also be used for non-certified services or applications. The certification is valid until March 21, 2024.

Special thanks goes to all the staff at the data center locations who made important contributions to these two certifications.

The DFN-PKI certifications authorities have audited the browser and operating system anchoring according to the ETSI EN 319 411-1 Standard (security level: global). An audit consists of two parts: the main portion takes place at DFN-CERT in Hamburg. In addition, there are announced visits at the DFN-PKI participant institutions where their services will also be randomly evaluated. A special thanks goes out to all the institutions that make successful DFN-PKI audits successful.

The current certification is valid until December, 2024.

Since 2001, DFN-CERT has been listed as a Trusted Introducer in the European CSIRT directory. Next, the organization successfully added the “accredited” title, and since 2012, DFN-CERT climbed to the highest rating, “certified.” The status is regularly audited and recertified.