Artifact Signing Public Trust: is a UK limited company incorporated in late 2024 eligible for organisation validation?

Pradeep Dahiya 0 Reputation points
2026-11-05T16:44:36.56+00:00

We're a UK private limited company (registered at Companies House in November 2024) and want a Public Trust certificate profile to sign our Windows agent (MSI and EXE).

The quickstart lists the United Kingdom as a supported region for Public Trust organisations. Some older answers here say organisations need three or more years of verifiable business history.

  1. Is a minimum company age (or tax history) still required for Public Trust organisation validation in 2026?
  2. If so, is there an alternative for companies younger than three years?

We'd rather not use one of the three validation attempts if we're not eligible. Thank you.

Artifact Signing
Artifact Signing

A fully managed end-to-end service for digitally signing code, documents, and applications. (formerly Trusted Signing)

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  1. Rukshan edirisinghe 2,365 Reputation points
    2026-11-06T02:01:21.2066667+00:00

    Hi @Pradeep Dahiya

    To answer your question directly: Microsoft's current Artifact Signing quickstart and FAQ don't state any minimum company age or tax-history requirement for Public Trust organisation validation. The only eligibility rule they publish is location: the UK is on the list of supported countries for organisations. The "three years of history" you've seen came from older answers here, and I couldn't find it in the current documentation. Only the identity validation team can say whether it's still applied behind the scenes.

    Since you're worried about spending an attempt, these details from the quickstart are the ones that most often trip up a new company:

    1. Legal name exactly as registered. Enter the company name exactly as it appears at Companies House, including "Ltd" or "Limited".
    2. Website on your own domain. The website URL must belong to the legal business entity.
    3. Primary email on that same domain. Use a monitored mailbox (not Gmail or Outlook.com). The Verified ID and email verification links go there and expire after seven days, so someone needs to act on them quickly.

    Please keep company and subscription identifiers out of this thread.

    Does your website and email domain match the company name registered at Companies House?

    If this clears up the eligibility question, please consider accepting it as the answer. If validation comes back with a reason, let me know and I'll be happy to keep helping.

    Reference:

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