The Protection Profile (PP) has been provided by the Technical Committee CEN/TC 224. It is referenced by the Commission Implementing Decision (EU) 2016/650 of 25 April 2016 laying down standards for the security assessment of qualified signature and seal creation devices pursuant to Articles 30(3) and 39(2) of Regulation (EU) No 910/2014 of the European Parliament and of the Council on electronic identification and trust services for electronic transactions in the internal market.

The intent of the Protection Profile is to specify functional and assurance requirements defined in the Directive for a secure signature-creation device (SSCD) which is the target of evaluation (TOE). The Protection Profile describes core security requirements for a secure device that can import a signing key (signature-creation data, SCD) and operates to create electronic signatures with the imported key.

After an SSCD has imported a signing key, the corresponding public key (signature verification data, SVD) has to be provided as input to a certificate generation application (CGA).

When operated in a secure environment for signature creation a signer may use an SSCD that fulfils only these core security requirements to create an advanced electronic signature. Security requirements for an SSCD used in other environments are not subject of this Protection Profile.