– The T-CAT is the staff card of the Catalan public administrations and contains electronic certificates qualified by the AOC that allow the identity of a certain employee of a public body to be guaranteed by electronic means.
In addition, it allows the production of the type of qualified electronic signature , contained in Law 6/2020, of November 11, regulating certain aspects of trusted electronic services.
– The T-CAT P is the personal identification certificate, encrypted (those issued before the modification of your profile due to the adaptation to EIDAS, scheduled for the end of June 2017; the subsequent ones do not incorporate the encryption option) and signature advanced with charge , optional, is a recognized certificate that identifies, in addition to the person who owns it, its subscribing organization, and may include a statement relating to the key holder's position. It is intended for public workers in the Catalan public sector.
It is an authentication tool that generates an advanced signature, given that it is delivered in software , without a secure signature creation device; so it can be installed on different media: computers, mobile phones, tablets, etc.
The T-CAT P that was issued before the modification of its profile to adapt to the changes applied by EIDAS, allows encrypted certificates to be sent to the holder, but does not offer any recovery mechanism for the private key, in case of loss it would not be possible to access the content of the documents.
In summary, the difference between these certificates is the medium in which they are issued ( the T-CAT is generated in the cryptographic chip of a card and the T-CAT P is generated in software ), a difference that varies the type of signature of each ( the T-CAT generates qualified signature and advanced T-CAT P , the latter having a lower level of security guarantees). This difference will define the possible uses in each case, depending on the type of signature required by the lender of a certain procedure.
