– The T-CAT is the staff card of the Catalan public administrations and contains qualified electronic certificates of 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 certificate of identification and advanced signature with optional charge (the T-CAT P issued before June 2017 (modification of its profile to adapt to eIDAS) also incorporated the encryption option). It is a recognized certificate that identifies, in addition to the person who owns it, its subscribing organization, and may include a statement regarding the position of the key holder. 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 issued before June 2017 allowed the owner to encrypt documents, emails... But no private key recovery mechanism is offered, in case of loss of the certificate the content of the encrypted documents could not be accessed.
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 one ( 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.