TL;DR: SSF Stöldskyddsföreningen is an independent non-profit association founded in 1934. It writes the security standards Swedish installers and insurers work to, and it runs diploma programmes for security managers and security coordinators. The proof used to be a PDF, which is easy to falsify and hard for an employer to check. SSF now issues blockchain secured certificates through TRUE that anyone can verify without contacting SSF, and it later extended the same proof to membership for all its member organisations.
An independent non-profit association, founded in 1934 in Gothenburg as Polistekniska rådfrågningsbyrån on the initiative of police chief Ernst Fontell. It writes the security standards the Swedish market works to, among them SSF 200 for burglary protection in buildings and SSF 130 for the design and installation of alarm systems. It lists certified products, sits on European committees, and co-owns the certification body SBSC.
It is not a government agency. Its authority rests on the industry accepting its rules, which is a different and more fragile kind of authority. It has to be maintained.
Because of what it lets someone do. SSF runs diploma programmes for security managers and security coordinators, and courses in security protection, personal safety and cyber security. An employer hiring against one of those certificates is not checking a nice detail on a CV. They are checking whether the person in front of them is qualified to be responsible for other people's safety.
Staffan Augustsson Frenning works with customers and sales at SSF. He states the problem in one sentence, and it has two halves.
“Because it is so easy to falsify credentials, and so difficult for employers to verify certificates, we wanted to deliver something better than regular Pdf's. Something trusted.”
Forging is easy. Checking is hard. A PDF loses on both counts, and the second half is the one most issuers never think about. You can make your document harder to fake and still leave the employer with no way to confirm it.
PDF certificates, sent by email, like almost everyone else. They looked correct. They also opened in any editor, and the only way to confirm one was to contact SSF and ask.
That last part is the hidden cost. Every certificate an issuer sends out as a PDF is a future phone call, and the calls land on the people who ran the course rather than on anyone whose job it is to answer them.
The check stopped going through SSF. In Staffan's words:
“TRUE allowed us to streamline our issuing process, and deliver diplomas which were verifiable in themselves, without going back to the source.”
Read the last five words again. A certificate that has to be confirmed by its issuer is only as available as that issuer's opening hours. A certificate that carries its own proof is available to a hiring manager in another country at eleven at night. Over a thousand certificates have been issued this way, and they have been viewed tens of thousands of times.
Because the same problem was sitting there.
“After a while we implemented Proofs of Memberships as well, for all SSF member organisations.”
A membership claim has exactly the shape of a certificate claim. Someone says they belong, a buyer wants to know whether that is current, and the association in the middle ends up answering the question by hand. When an issuer moves a second document type onto the same rails without being asked, that is the clearest signal the first one worked.
Two things, and SSF names both. Security was the reason they started. The second one they did not go looking for.
“This build-in security feature, plus the exposure our courses received from our proud participants had a very positive impact on our organisation.”
Participants share a certificate they are proud of, and every share carries the name of the organisation that issued it. Maria Dahlstedt, Program Manager at SSF, describes the standard the documents have to meet:
“SSF offer extensive training in Security to our customers, both physically and digitally. It has been particularly important for us to be able to ensure that our Proofs of Education, in the form of Certificates and Diplomas are correct and secure.”
Open the link on the certificate, or scan the QR code on it. The answer comes back in seconds, from the record rather than from SSF, and it holds whether the person checking is an employer, a client or an insurer. The same mechanism is described in more detail in our note on blockchain versus traditional certificate verification.
Staffan Augustsson Frenning published his account as a LinkedIn recommendation on 25 June 2025, and the quotes on this page are taken from it. SSF describes its own work, standards and courses at stoldskyddsforeningen.se. Two other security companies took the same route for the same reason: 2Secure and OneMore Secure. On why forged credentials are getting easier to produce, see how blockchain prevents AI generated fake certificates.
An independent non-profit association founded in 1934 to prevent crime. It writes security standards such as SSF 200 for burglary protection and SSF 130 for alarm systems, runs diploma programmes for security managers and coordinators, and co-owns the certification body SBSC. It is not a government agency.
Because a PDF fails twice. Staffan Augustsson Frenning at SSF says it is easy to falsify credentials and difficult for employers to verify certificates, so SSF wanted to deliver something better than regular PDFs.
Open the link on the certificate or scan its QR code. The answer comes back in seconds and does not require calling SSF, because the certificate is verifiable in itself.
Yes. SSF later added Proofs of Membership for all its member organisations, using the same blockchain secured format as the course diplomas.
Exposure. SSF says the built in security feature, together with the attention its courses received from proud participants, had a very positive impact on the organisation.
Every organisation on these pages started with the same question. Give us thirty minutes and we will show you what your own documents would be worth.
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