Challenges with traditional (non-digital) certificates

Technology has advanced significantly in recent years, and the expansion and adoption of digitalization have risen. While everything, including old paper-based certifications, now has a virtual equivalent known as digital credentials, let’s take a look at the major issues or challenges that paper-based certifications faced and how digital credentials address them.

Expensive:

Paper-based certifications incurred numerous costs along the development process, including production or printing costs, transportation costs, design costs, and labor costs, to name a few. Let’s take a closer look at what we’re talking about and how do these expenses incur. To create a non-digital certification, a design must first be created and then printed using printing services, which incurs costs. Furthermore, firms must pay delivery or shipping charges to deliver certificates, and all of this requires a significant amount of labor, resulting in labor costs.

Issuing digital credentials through digital credential management software helps the issuers facilitate the creating and issuing process through automated and integrated software that saves both the cost and money of the businesses.

Storage:

Non-digital or paper-based certifications must be physically carried and preserved. Physical storage, such as filing it in paper records or framing the credentials, is required. Aside from that, paper certificates might be damaged by dust, termites, or mishandling.

Digital credentials, a type of virtual accreditation, are easy to store in digital databases, wallets, or backpacks. This secures the papers’ protection and safekeeping.

Security:

Physical certifications are vulnerable to being mishandled and stored, as well as being lost accidentally or through theft. This is a serious issue because certificates can easily be falsified, duplicated, or altered if they are lost or stolen.

Digital credentials are protected with bank-level encryptions, which prevent unauthorized access to the certificate, and are frequently protected by a digital key or passcode, reducing the risk of cybersecurity threats, manipulation of data, or counterfeiting.

Verification:

As previously stated, the security of physical certifications is limited, making it difficult for recruiters to verify the authenticity of the certification obtained. Recruiters require a validated certificate to evaluate an applicant for a job role because counterfeit credentials and fraudulent activities are on the rise. Physical certificate verification involves physically inspecting the document or reaching out to the issuing entity. This can take a long time and may not produce the desired outcomes.

Digital credentials are verified credentials backed by meta-data that stores the issuer name, recipient name, certification criteria, issuing date, and expiration date, as well as the issuing organization’s digital signature, all of which are stored in digital databases and can be verified with a few clicks.

Shareability:

Paper-based documents had to be physically carried, which made sharing difficult. Carrying all of the appropriate physical documents is a challenge, and there’s no way to share physical certificates if other documents are required that you don’t have with you.

Digital credentials eliminate this problem since they can be shared across all digital platforms, such as websites, social networking sites, and email, with ease.