La souveraineté d'ESTRADS Certification :
ESTRADS Certification mesure la souveraineté des entreprises. Nous publions donc la nôtre, avec le détail de ce qui est français, de ce qui ne l'est pas, et de ce que nous faisons de nos données et de celles de nos clients.
La souveraineté d'une entreprise ne se résume pas à un drapeau sur un site internet. Elle se vérifie sur le capital, la gouvernance, le droit applicable, l'hébergement des données et la chaîne de fournisseurs. Voici où nous en sommes.
Our Sovereignty
Un organisme de certification souverain doit pouvoir prouver sa propre souveraineté. ESTRADS Certification publie donc la sienne.
A Message from the President:
« Le capital d’ESTRADS Certification, je le détiens personnellement. Ce n’est pas un hasard de montage juridique : c’est la condition pour que personne ne puisse nous demander un jour d’arbitrer entre la rentabilité et l’indépendance de nos jugements.
This requirement comes at a cost, and we’re paying it. We’ve chosen French tools whenever they were available, even when they were more expensive or less user-friendly than the solutions everyone else uses. We’ve secured favorable financing offers on terms that few companies our size can obtain, because they came from foreign funds whose interest was clearly less in our profitability than in access to data from sensitive European companies. Our auditors, developers, and service providers work in France. Our printer is French. These are decisions I make myself, one by one, and that is how sovereignty becomes more than just a line in a brochure.
Our clients are companies in sensitive sectors. No certification is issued without supporting documentation. I have never considered that these documents could be processed anywhere other than in France, by a company governed by a legal system other than French law. The entire team knows this, and everyone who joins us learns it on their first day.
"We are publishing this page with its gray areas because an organization that assesses the sovereignty of others has no right to be vague about its own."
Jean-Michel Samoyau, Président d’ESTRADS Certification
ESTRADS Certification est une SASU dont le capital est détenu à 100 % par son président, de nationalité française. Aucun investisseur étranger, aucun fonds, aucune société mère. Les fonctions de direction sont exercées par des personnes de nationalité française.
There are three documents that confirm this, which we will provide upon request:
- the company's articles of incorporation, which name the sole shareholder and are available for review on the INPI portal;
- an annual statement from our accounting firm regarding the distribution of capital;
- a statement confirming that there are no shareholders' agreements, convertible securities, security interests in securities, or debt owed to a foreign lender.
The last point is just as important as the first two. A company may be French-owned but lose control over its decisions due to debt or a covenant. .
Geographical Scope and Applicable Law
Our headquarters are located at 25 Avenue Duquesne, Paris7th arrondissement. We have no subsidiaries, branches, or representative offices abroad.
Our contracts are governed by French law and designate the French courts as the competent jurisdiction. None of our obligations fall under the jurisdiction of a foreign court. This is what sets us apart from non-European rating platforms, which are subject to the Cloud Act and requests from foreign authorities.
Our customers' data
The supporting documents submitted by our clients and the resulting audit reports are hosted on ARGOS, our certification platform, on a dedicated OVH server located in France. None of this data is stored or synchronized in a U.S. cloud.
We use artificial intelligence from Mistral AI, a French software company, to assist our analysts in drafting reports. Access is provided via API in a version that does not retain data or train models, and the documents transmitted are anonymized. No customer data is used to train a model, either at Mistral AI or elsewhere.
Our Digital Tools
We choose French publishers whenever a solution is available.
| Usage | Tool | Publisher | Accommodations |
|---|---|---|---|
| ARGOS Certification Platform | In-house development | ESTRADS Certification | OVH, Dedicated Server in France |
| Domain Name | OVH | French | France |
| Videoconferencing and Internal Messaging | Whaller | French | France |
| CRM and Billing | Sellsy | French, publisher based in La Rochelle | France |
| Artificial Intelligence | Mistral AI | French | API with no retention |
Videoconference sessions are not recorded. Sellsy and Whaller do not process any supporting documents uploaded to ARGOS.
Two closed-scope technical tools
Two tools in our technical workflow are not French editions. Neither of them has access to our customers' data.
- Sentry monitors technical errors in ARGOS. It receives application error messages, not documents.
- Mailjet sends the platform's automated emails. These are notifications: no supporting documents or audit reports are included in them.
What Is Not Sovereign in Our Country
Like most French companies, we use American software and hardware: the Microsoft Office suite for office automation, Microsoft Exchange for email, the Adobe suite for graphic design, and Apple computers. Our domain name, rads.fr, is managed by OVH, but our email accounts are hosted by Microsoft.
We prefer to state this rather than leave it out. An organization that assesses the sovereignty of others must be precise about its own sovereignty—and, above all, transparent.
The boundary we maintain concerns our clients’ data. An audit report may be drafted in a Microsoft word processor, but it is stored on ARGOS, hosted by OVH in France. Supporting documents and reports are neither stored nor synchronized on OneDrive, SharePoint, Creative Cloud, or iCloud, and are not exchanged via email: both uploads and downloads are handled through ARGOS. No backups of the platform are sent to a U.S. cloud service.
None of the publishers of these suites have access to ARGOS or its content.
Geographical Scope and Applicable Law
Our contributors are independent French service providers. Our auditors, experts, and developers work in France.
Our suppliers and subcontractors are French, even for non-digital services such as printing, promotional items, and communications services. When multiple options are available, we choose the one whose capital and hosting are based in France, even if it is not the least expensive or the easiest to implement.
Our management partners are French: a French bank, a French certified public accountant, and a French attorney.
Recruitment
Toute personne qui rejoint ESTRADS Certification, salariée ou prestataire, fait l’objet de contrôles poussés avant son arrivée. Nos analystes accèdent à des documents d’entreprises de la défense, de l’aéronautique et du nucléaire : la sécurité de ces données passe autant par les personnes que par les serveurs.
Each staff member is bound by a confidentiality agreement signed individually and has access only to the files for which they are responsible.
Our Standards and Technology
Our trademarks and certifications are registered with the INPI. Our standards are developed by our teams in collaboration with external experts, and we hold the rights to them.
ARGOS is developed in-house. We own the source code outright, with no third-party licenses for the platform's core.
Our own NSI Index
90,52 %
Nous avons appliqué à ESTRADS Certification le NSI – National Sovereignty index, notre indice de souveraineté, et nous en publions le résultat chapitre par chapitre.
| Chapter | Score |
|---|---|
| 1. Governance Policy | 100 % |
| 2. Geographic Focus Policy | 100 % |
| 3. Politique de développement durable et RSE/ESG | 97,6 % |
| 4. Company Security Policy | 79,5 % |
| 5. Economic Intelligence Policy | 96,1 % |
| 6. Policy on the Procurement of Raw Materials and Intermediate Goods | 100 % |
| 7. Policy on the Selection and Management of Suppliers and Subcontractors | 95,6 % |
| 8. Research and Development Policy | 100 % |
| 9. Certifications Obtained by the Company | 80 % |
| 10. Outreach Policy | 50 % |
| Overall Index | 90,52 % |
What We're Changing
We are switching from DocuSign to Certinomis, the La Poste Group’s electronic signature solution, so that our certificates are signed by a French service provider.
A company’s autonomy is never guaranteed once and for all: a software publisher may change shareholders, and a hosting provider may switch infrastructure. We review our suppliers annually and update this page accordingly.
Consultez également les engagements et certifications reçues par ESTRADS Certification.
