UKHO receives CoreTrustSeal accreditation

Following substantial investments in both our internal technology infrastructure and our customer facing services, the UKHO has been awarded the widely recognised CoreTrustSeal accreditation and has been certified as a Trustworthy Data Repository by the CoreTrustSeal Standards and Certification Board for our bathymetry data archive.

This accreditation embodies our core transformational theme of customer centricity, and it rewards our long-term commitment to technology excellence, data integrity, and security standards.

The CoreTrustSeal accreditation reinforces our position as the UK’s accredited Bathymetry Data Archive Centre (DAC) and one of the seven accredited DACs that make up the wider Marine Environmental Data and Information Network (MEDIN), a network that we are proud to be part of.

Receiving the CoreTrustSeal accreditation is also a crucial milestone in the advancement of our Seabed Mapping Services and the development of our seabed-focused product offering. It also supports our aims for the newly unveiled UK Centre for Seabed Mapping (UK CSM) and our work under the Seabed 2030 framework. In this context, the CoreTrustSeal accreditation is of critical strategic importance to ensure the UKHO remains the UK authority for archiving bathymetry data.

Some of the improvements that we have made to our Seabed Mapping Services that significantly contributed to the Board’s decision to grant us the accreditation include the addition of daily updates of new bathymetric surveys, the enabling of web mapping service for visual display, and the cleansing of over 6000 metadata records available to the latest MEDIN 3.1 standard, which also ensures compliance with wider initiatives such as INSPIRE and GEMINI.

The achievement of this accreditation follows an extensive application process for which the CoreTrustSeal Accreditation Board required detailed supporting evidence in over 16 areas, ranging from confidentiality and ethics to data integrity, authenticity, quality, and security. This accolade is also deserved recognition of all the hard work and efforts of the wider teams that continue to develop and support the UKHO’s overall technology estate.