Inquiry: Azure Artifact Signing Public Trust support for South Korean organizations (as of November 2, 2026)

Azure Artifact Signing Public Trust currently supports legally registered organizations in South Korea, so your company can proceed with organization identity validation rather than waiting for a geographic expansion.^1^

Current eligibility

Microsoft’s published prerequisites explicitly include South Korea among the supported locations for organizations using Public Trust certificates. The narrower United States-or-Canada restriction applies to individual developers, not organization validation.^1^

For a publicly distributed Windows installer, select the production Public Trust model. It is designed for Win32 code signing and publicly distributed artifacts; a Public Trust Test profile is only for development/testing and is not publicly trusted.^2^

Recommended onboarding path

1. Use a paid Azure subscription.
   Free, trial, and sponsored subscriptions are not supported for creating Artifact Signing accounts and certificate profiles.^3^
2. Register the resource provider.
   In Azure portal, go to: Subscriptions → your subscription → Settings → Resource providers → Microsoft.CodeSigning → Register Alternatively:

      az login
      az account set --subscription "<subscription-id>"
      az provider register --namespace Microsoft.CodeSigning
      az provider show --namespace Microsoft.CodeSigning
      az extension add --name artifact-signing
   

3. Create the Artifact Signing account.
   Go to Azure portal → Artifact Signing Accounts → Create. Select a supported region; Korea Central is listed as an available Artifact Signing region.^1^
4. Assign the identity-validation role.
   The operator creating the validation needs the Artifact Signing Identity Verifier role. If New identity validation is disabled, the FAQ identifies the missing role as the applicable cause.^3^
5. Create an Organization/Public Trust identity validation in the portal.
   Identity validation must be completed through the Azure portal; it cannot be completed through the Azure CLI. Enter the organization’s legal details exactly as registered and complete all document, representative, and primary-email verification requests.^1^
6. Create a production Public Trust certificate profile after validation is completed.
   A completed identity validation is required before a certificate profile can be created. The validated organization identity supplies the certificate subject information.^4^

Roadmap status

No Korea expansion timeline is required because organization support is already documented as available. The referenced public documentation does not announce a separate future rollout for South Korea.

Eligibility does not guarantee that every application will pass identity validation. Microsoft must validate the submitted legal and identity information under its Public Trust requirements.^4^

Whether to use another certificate authority

A third-party CA such as DigiCert, GlobalSign, or Sectigo is not required merely because your organization is South Korean. Azure Artifact Signing Public Trust is the directly supported Microsoft option for your stated scenario.

Evaluate a third-party CA only if you have a separate requirement—for example, an existing CA procurement arrangement or a workflow that specifically requires possession or deployment of a conventional certificate. Microsoft’s Artifact Signing documentation describes its own managed Public Trust service but does not recommend one of those third-party providers over another.

If South Korea does not appear in the portal’s country/region list, or validation fails for a reason unrelated to an expired or missed verification email, open an Azure support ticket. The FAQ designates Azure Support and Microsoft Q&A with the Artifact Signing tag as the support channels for identity-validation assistance.^3^

References

1. Quickstart: Set up Artifact Signing | Microsoft Learn
2. Artifact Signing trust models
3. Artifact Signing FAQ
4. Artifact Signing resources and roles