PKI Consortium blog

Digital Trust Is Elusive – Are Qualified Trust Services A Solution?
May 1, 2020 by Sebastian Schulz Attack eIDAS ENISA ETSI Phishing Policy QTSP Qualified SSL/TLS Trust List TSP

A popular saying goes: “Trust takes years to build, seconds to break, and forever to repair.”

While I wouldn’t completely agree, the idea isn’t wrong. In real life trust between two parties is established over some period of time, depending on a variety of factors. Have you ever wondered why you initially trust some people more and others less, even if you’ve never met them before? There are a complicated multitude of factors that influence our thoughts: the person’s appearance, tone of voice, title or rank, etc. Trust is established over time but can be lost within a few moments.

What Are Subordinate CAs and Why Would You Want Your Own?
June 26, 2019 by Doug Beattie (GlobalSign) CA/Browser Forum Chrome Code Signing CRL ECC eIDAS Encryption EV HSM Identity Microsoft OCSP PKI Policy Revocation RSA S/MIME SSL/TLS

Digital certificate and PKI adoption has changed quite a bit in recent years. Gone are the days where certificates were only synonymous with SSL/TLS; compliance drivers like stronger authentication requirements and digital signature regulations (e.g. eIDAS) have greatly expanded the role of PKI within the enterprise.

As PKI usage has expanded, conversation has moved beyond just the number and type of certificates needed and onto deeper dialogue about custom PKI deployments. A large part of the conversation is around subordinate CAs, sometimes referred to as Issuing or Intermediate CAs, and why an organization might want their own. Let’s discuss.

CA/B Forum Istanbul 2015
November 10, 2015 by Dean Coclin Chrome eIDAS Qualified Root Program WebTrust

While some face to face meetings can be rather mundane and boring, that can’t be said about October’s CA/B Forum meeting in Istanbul, Turkey.  Guest speaker Andrea Servida from the European Commission gave an overview of the new eIDAS regulation on electronic identification and trust services. While not everyone in the room agreed with his points, all were made aware that this has now become the law in the EU and certificate authorities which plan to issue the new EU Qualified website certificates must comply with it. Unfortunately, the law appears to make it a requirement that the Certificate Authority (or Trust Service Provider-TSP as spelled out in the regulation) must be based in the EU or in a country that has an agreement with the EU. This could limit CA choices for EU website owners to only smaller CAs located in the EU, and potentially drive up certificate prices. A link to Mr. Servida’s presentation is here: https://cabforum.org/wp-content/uploads/eIDAS-Istanbul-Servida.pdf

CA Day in Berlin
January 24, 2014 by Dean Coclin eIDAS ETSI EV Microsoft PKI Qualified Root Program RSA SSL/TLS TSP

“CA Day” (also known as CA Conformity Assessment) was hosted by the German company TuVIT in Berlin on January 16, 2014. In attendance were approximately 100 people from mostly European CAs. Under the European regulatory framework, CAs are included in a group referred to as “Trust Service Providers” or “TSPs.” CASC members in attendance at CA Day were Symantec, Digicert and Comodo. The dominant theme for this CA Day was the draft Regulation on Electronic identification and trust services for electronic transactions in the internal market (eIDAS) and upcoming changes in EU regulations for Qualified Certificates, which was briefed by Gerard Galler from the European Commission and discussed in greater detail by several European TSPs. eIDAS includes a proposal for EU Qualified Website certificates (i.e. SSL) using the Extended Validation certificate as a regulatory baseline. Under proposed Article 37, qualified website certificates could only be issued by EU Qualified CAs which have been audited according to ETSI (European Telecommunications Standards Institute) standards by an approved auditor. If promulgated by the European Parliament, the Commission would be empowered to give EU Qualified EV SSL certificates the “backing” of EU law.