Diane Hobday, NATA Sector Manager, Materials Assets and Products speaks about the growing problem of unauthorised alteration of reports and test certificates in product supply chains, and NATA’s plans for a new digital authentication measure to help protect reports generated by accredited testing facilities. NATA will investigate and trial authentication measures this year which will provide confidence to users of test certificates and reports. This will not be mandatory, laboratories will be free to use it if they wish to add a layer of protection to their reports. The authentication will show that altered, edited or printed and rescanned reports may be compromised and this will prompt the user to contact the testing laboratory to confirm the content of the report.
We have undertaken to investigate and trial authentication measures this year. The aim is to have an authentication measure that will provide confidence to users of test certificates and reports. This will not be mandatory, laboratories will be free to use it if they wish to add a layer of protection to their reports. The authentication will show that altered, edited or printed and rescanned reports may be compromised and this will prompt the user to contact the testing laboratory to confirm the content of the report.