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Ballot 83 – Adopt Network and Certificate System Security Requirements

On Ballot 83, there were “YES” votes from nine CAs and two Browsers. There were “NO” votes from four CAs and one Browser. Three CAs abstained.

Therefore, Ballot 83 passes with 69% of CAs and 66% of Browsers in favor.

Ben Wilson made the following motion, and Bill Madell and Rick Andrews endorsed it:

Motion begins

As of 1 January 2013 (“Effective Date”), the CA/Browser Forum adopts the “Network and Certificate System Security Requirements” Ballot Draft 1 as Version 1.0. Upon adoption the Ballot Draft shall be assigned a version number of 1.0 and be posted as a Forum Guideline to the cabforum.org Web site.

The members request that those members who have worked on the Network and Certificate System Security Requirements coordinate with the WebTrust Task Force and ETSI and work on adaptations of the Network and Certificate System Security Requirements that can be incorporated into the respective WebTrust and ETSI audit criteria as soon as feasible.

The ballot review period comes into effect at 2100 UTC on 20 July ’12 and will close at 2100 UTC on 27 July ’12. Unless the motion is withdrawn during the review period, the voting period will start immediately thereafter and will close at 2100 UTC on 3 Aug ’12. Votes must be cast by posting an on-list reply to this thread.

Motion ends

A vote in favour of the motion must indicate a clear ‘yes’ in the response. A vote against must indicate a clear ‘no’ in the response. A vote to abstain must indicate a clear ‘abstain’ in the response. Unclear responses will not be counted. The latest vote received from any representative of a voting member before the close of the voting period will be counted.

Voting members are listed here:

/forum.html

with the addition of TrendMicro.

In order for the motion to be adopted, two thirds or more of the votes cast by members in the CA category and one half or more of the votes cast by members in the browser category must be in favour. Also, at least seven members must participate in the ballot, either by voting in favour, voting against or abstaining.

See: Network_Security_Controls_V1

Latest releases
Server Certificate Requirements
SC099: Improve Recording of Validation Methods - May 19, 2026

Code Signing Requirements
v3.8 - Aug 5, 2024

What’s Changed CSC-25: Import EV Guidelines to CS Baseline Requirements by @dzacharo in https://github.com/cabforum/code-signing/pull/38 Full Changelog: https://github.com/cabforum/code-signing/compare/v3.7...v3.8

S/MIME Requirements
v1.0.14 - Ballot SMC016 - May 5, 2026

This ballot maintains consistency between the S/MIME Baseline Requirements and the TLS Baseline Requirements with changes introduced by Ballots SC096 and SC097. Specifically, this ballot: Creates a carve-out of the logging requirements for DNSSEC specifically, stating these are not in scope. For audit purposes, change management logging is able to confirm if the appropriate controls are in effect or not. Sunsets all remaining use of SHA-1 signatures in Certificates and CRLs. It is noted that most uses of SHA-1 signatures are already deprecated by SC097. With this ballot, all unexpired Subordinate CA Certificates issuing S/MIME containing the SHA-1 signature algorithm must be revoked. This proposal does not prohibit the use of SHA-1 to generate issuerKeyHash or issuerNameHash values as currently required by RFC 5019. Includes minor formatting corrections.

Network and Certificate System Security Requirements
Version 2.0.5 (Ballot NS-008) - Jul 9, 2025

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The Certification Authority Browser Forum (CA/Browser Forum) is a voluntary gathering of Certificate Issuers and suppliers of Internet browser software and other applications that use certificates (Certificate Consumers).