How does it work

In cooperation with the United States government we have developed a special procedure requesting confidential treatment of your trade data. CTO will take care this certification is made according the national compliance, at the appropriate department of the government or authority, following the right procedures to avoid rejection or delay. This allows companies to get optimum protection of their valuable business information with CTO as their grantee.

Step 1

In order to initiate the procedure for confidential treatment of your trade data, we require a power of attorney which is defined and limited, exclusively for this procedure.

We friendly ask you to download, complete and email it to: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

You can revoke this Power of Attorney any time by downloading the revocation here. After completion please send it by email to: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it., we will confirm you this revocation immediately by email.

Step 2

The system at the government filters companies that have claimed confidential treatment by its name and not by a unique number. To be sure your company is covered, also when your name has been written slightly different or false, you have the possibilty to file your company name and 9 variations, which will be filtered out as confidential information.

Please download the order form, fill it out and send it back by e-mail to: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

If you are not in Germany but in the European Union please fill out your international VAT Nr. so we can send you an invoice without VAT.

Step 3

After we have received the Power of Attorney and the order form with your company names we will send you an order confirmation and invoice.

As soon as we have received your payment, we will send an official request for confidential treatment of your trade data to the authorities.

Step 4

We will inform you as soon as we have received a confirmation of our request from the responsible authorities.

It will take 6 till 8 weeks before we receive a final confirmation of confidential treatment of your trade data, you will be informed immediately about this. 

The start date of this final confirmation is also the start date of your 24 months confidentiality. You will automatically be informed about a possible prolongation of your subscription after 21 months.