Another CAB Forum meeting in Virtual Form

Another virtual CA/B Forum meeting was held on March 2nd-4th due to the pandemic. The meeting was traditionally divided into a working group meeting and a meeting of the entire forum, which specifically discussed updated browsers and audit requirements.

In the working group discussion, key discussions included the progress of the work to create a single standard for S/MIME certificates and updates on standards for Code Signing certificates. There was also a discussion about the role of the Organisation Unit field in certificates and the implications of possibly removing this field or its detailed description in standards.

During the general meeting there is always a particular excitement about browser updates, presentations were given by representatives of: Apple, Google, Microsoft and Mozilla. We were especially interested in Apple’s presentation, which declared closer cooperation with CA in the area of certificate revocation information, in Google’s presentation, which drew our attention to the certificate hierarchy, where TLS certificates should not be mixed with other types of certificates and in Mozilla’s presentation, where we could find out about the status of adding more roots to this browser, Certum is especially interested in this process because we have submitted a request to add more subroots to that browser.

The next day we discussed audits of Certificate Authorities, mainly the problems that may arise during these audits due to the pandemic. A special place in this day’s meeting was taken by the guest lecture on quantum cryptography – this is a topic that attracts more and more interest among Certification Authorities.

“As Certum, we support all quantum cryptography initiatives that address the latest cyber security threats.”

We are pleased that despite the pandemic situation in the world we managed to organize another substantive and interesting meeting in a safe virtual form.