Data Integrity, Security & Encryption

The Base Registry provides secure data storage mechanisms that protect sensitive fields through encryption at rest. Individual columns in the registry database can be encrypted using pgcrypto, with encryption keys managed via a dedicated Key Management Service. This approach ensures a high level of confidentiality for personally identifiable information while keeping cryptographic operations transparent to the registry application. The platform ensures secure access to registry data through authenticated and authorized APIs.

Partner Signature Verification

External callers reach the registry through the Partner API, which does not use Keycloak — callers prove identity by signing their request. The registry verifies that signature against the partner's public key, and deliberately stores no partner keys of its own: it fetches them at verification time from Partner Management, the platform's central registry of partner keys, and caches them briefly in-process. Keys are looked up by the partner reference PARTNER_<sender_id> — the same convention used across the platform — so onboarding, approval and key rotation are handled once, centrally, rather than per registry. A partner that is unknown or has been disabled in Partner Management yields no key and the request is rejected (fail-closed).

Signature verification is an independent switch from consent enforcement (see Consent-Aware data sharing); the Helm values ship it off, so it is opt-in per deployment. Design detail, configuration and the current per-endpoint status are in Partner APIs → Authentication and signature verification.

De-Duplication and Record Matching

To prevent duplicate registry records, the platform includes a built-in deduplication engine. Whenever a new change request is created, the registry performs similarity matching against existing records using SQL trigram-based matching. Possible duplicates are flagged in the change request workflow, allowing verifiers and approvers to take informed decisions before approving the proposed change. Deduplication runs asynchronously, ensuring that user interaction remains responsive while still providing timely alerting.