Ten years of safe travel worldwide: Bundesdruckerei hands over operation of the ICAO Public Key Directory

Berlin, 17 April 2026. After ten years, the Bundesdruckerei Group has handed over the operation of the ICAO Public Key Directory (PKD) – maintained by the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) – to Netrust Pte Ltd. The ICAO PKD serves as a central directory for the exchange of information necessary to validate the authenticity and integrity of electronic travel documents, such as e-passports, worldwide. Rather than relying on complex and error-prone bilateral agreements, the PKD enables states to efficiently upload and download the digital signatures required for chip authentication. As a central intermediary, the system also ensures that all data complies with international technical standards, thereby guaranteeing seamless cross-border interoperability. This major international infrastructure project thus marks a successful conclusion for the Federal Government’s technology company: Bundesdruckerei GmbH, its sister companies D-Trust and Maurer Electronics, in close cooperation with the subsidiary Veridos, have made a significant contribution to secure border controls worldwide.The PKD service’s highly secure and highly available infrastructure, designed with geographical redundancy, enables fast and secure border checks in numerous countries: when checking electronic passports, authorities and e-gates verify the signature on a document’s chip against the certificate issued by the issuing country. The signature certificates and revocation lists required for this are provided centrally via the ICAO PKD. This enables participating states to retrieve the necessary information at any time, incorporate it into their border control solutions and avoid the need for bilateral exchanges with each individual country.

Now 107 member states 

“We are delighted to have been able to support the ICAO and the participating PKD countries with this important service over the past ten years. Our highly secure infrastructure has helped ensure that more than a hundred nations can now exchange their ePassport certificates securely. In this way, we are making an important contribution, both today and tomorrow, to secure and efficient border controls worldwide,” says Dr Claudia Thamm, Managing Director of the Bundesdruckerei Group. 

What originally began with 45 member states has, under the technical supervision of Bundesdruckerei and its partners, developed into a global network of 107 member states: in 2015, Bundesdruckerei won the publicly tendered contract for the re-establishment and operation of the ICAO PKD. Since then, it has provided the infrastructure for the PKD service via the qualified trust service provider D-Trust, a company within the Bundesdruckerei Group, and with the support of its subsidiary Veridos. Veridos, a joint venture between Bundesdruckerei and Giesecke+Devrient, was responsible for operational and technical support for the ICAO and the countries participating in the PKD.