Software giant Microsoft Corp. and blockchain technology company Tierion Inc. today announced a collaboration to build a system of distributed proof of integrity and existence for data.

The resulting platform will be used to allow people and organizations to secure control of identity and related data — thus creating a framework for digitally signed certificates, receipts or official statements.

The technology will use the distributed ledger system known as blockchain to let users sign data, claims or agreements with their identities. Microsoft calls these signatures of identity-proving data “attestations.”

An example of the use of such an attestation would be an online university providing proof that a student took a particular course. Upon completion of that course, the university would provide an attestation digitally signed and captured with a timestamp set on a secured, public blockchain.

The result: Anyone could verify that the course had been successfully completed without the need to trust the signers or the service providers. The presence of an attestation on the blockchain signed by the identity belonging to the university and linked to the student would act as stand-alone digital proof.

Tierion’s role in this partnership would be to provide for proof of the data’s integrity by linking Microsoft’s decentralized identity service to a secure blockchain.

“Tierion is a leader in anchoring data to blockchains,” said Daniel Buchner, Microsoft’s head of decentralized identity. “We’re excited to collaborate with them to advance our decentralized identity initiative.”

Tierion Chief Executive Wayne Vaughan explained that not all companies want to take advantage of the security a blockchain platform can provide, but they don’t have the resources to build their own blockchain. To fill this niche, Tierion offers services that can take a company’s legacy system and link the data to an already existing blockchain.

The tagline for the company dubs the service as “your bridge to the blockchain.”

Tierion has developed an open standard for linking data to a blockchain using a system called Chainpoint. With Chainpoint, users can record data in a blockchain and receive a “receipt” that contains the data needed to verify the integrity of the data without needing to trust the issuer.

The Chainpoint whitepaper is available from Tierion with more information. For developers the company also publishes its application programming interface and documentation online.

Microsoft and Tierion have not yet released details on when this platform will be released to the public.

Image credit: Tierion Inc. and Microsoft Corp. logos.