Ballot 139 – Vice Chair Election
Ballot 139 – Vice Chair Election
The voting period to elect a new Vice Chair of the CA / Browser Forum is now open.
Voting will close at 2200 UTC on Friday, 24 October 2014.
Candidates for Vice Chair are:
Atilla Biler – Turktrust
Kirk Hall – Trend Micro
Robin Alden – Comodo
Below are their candidate statements previously sent to the Forum.
Voting Instructions
Please send your vote to the Election Committee – Don Sheehy at and cc: Arno Fiedler at .
Each Member has one equal vote (regardless of whether its class of membership is CA or Browser).
The candidate with the most votes on this ballot is appointed to the position of Vice Chair. If two candidates tie with highest number of votes, another election will be held for just those two candidates.
About the Election Committee and its Processes
The Election Committee will tally the last vote submitted by a member during the voting period. The Election Committee will not include any votes submitted before or after the voting period when compiling the votes.
All votes are “confidential information” of the Election Committee.
The Election Committee will publish the ballot results by sending an email to the public mailing list. That email will contain: a short description of the ballot, the total number of votes submitted during the voting period, and the name of the candidate receiving the most votes. The Election Committee may include other language as necessary to accurately describe the ballot and any concerns the Election Committee had with the ballot, provided that such language does not disclose how individual Forum Members voted.
About the Office of Vice Chair
The Vice Chair:
- has authority of the Chair in his absence or unavailability,
- has duties delegated to the Chair,
- presides at Forum Meetings and calls in the Chair’s absence,
- shall exercise functions in a fair and neutral manner,
- allows all Members equal treatment for their comments and proposals, and
- does not favor one side over another, but may indicate their own position during discussion and voting on matters.
Candidate Statements
Candidate Statement of Atilla Biler to CA/Browser Forum
Dear All,
I’m relatively new in the Forum as a member representing my company TURKTRUST from Turkey. So, it is obvious that I have not been as involved as Kirk and Robin did regarding the CAB Forum activities, who are here within the Forum since its establishment. Now, I’m trying to catch up with the Forum work coming from the previous years and creating my own history here from a new and fresh look, trying to contribute as much as possible.
First of all, I would like to thank Dean again, the next CA/Browser Forum chair after Ben, for nominating me for the CA/Browser Forum vice-chair position.
Being a CA/Browser Forum member from out of Northern America myself, representing a European company which is close to the other important parts of the world mainly Asia, Middle East and Africa, I believe I may serve the CA/Browser Forum to be more globally oriented, instead of being mainly Northern America oriented. Many CAs from different parts of the world are being represented currently within the CA/Browser Forum and this variety is increasing as it should be. Apart from the internet users in North America and Europe, there are many internet users in Asia, Middle East and Africa as well, which actually constitute the new major markets for CAs and for browser vendors recently. Hence, bringing in the feedback, the needs, the concerns, the participation and the contributions of these regions fairly and equally will be among my primary goals in this position.
I will completely be unbiased and fair for the membership from all over the world. I will not be putting my own company interests in conflict with the Forum. On the contrary, I will try my best to promote the general Forum interests that will be beneficial for all members, including both the CA members and the browser members. While doing this, being an experienced sector specialist and an IT manager for years, I will aim to set the internet standards higher, make the internet more secure, and will also try to bring these security and high standards with practical applicability as much as possible. After all, there will be a tradeoff between the ideal and the practical and I will try my best to keep a right balance in between these two.
Coming to the administrative duties of a vice-chair, I will responsibly be filling in for the chair when he cannot be present. I will then run the meetings, take the notes, publish the minutes as well as moderate and mediate the discussions during those meetings when the chair is away, as well as to assist the chair for the normal duties regularly. I am an organized person myself and I’m sure I will be handling those duties appropriately when necessary. Finally, I have to earnestly state that if the Forum members deem me worth of this vice-chair position, it will truly be an honor for me to serve for the CA/Browser Forum.
Kind regards,
- Atilla BILER
Business Development Manager
TURKTRUST Inc.
Candidate Statement of Kirk Hall to CA/Browser Forum
Dear Members,
The other two candidates for Vice Chair, Atilla and Robin, are both highly qualified, so the Members can’t go wrong with any choice.
- Vice Chair from an international company. Ben and Dean made the point on a recent call that there is interest in adding leadership from an international (non-North American) company. Trend Micro is a Japanese company headquartered in Tokyo, with subsidiaries in the US, Canada, and many other countries. I personally supervise a Japanese vetting team and work with development, support, and security teams in China, The Philippines, and Taiwan, as well as with sales groups in Europe, Mexico, South America, and Australia/New Zealand. I am well aware of the challenges for CAs outside North America, and would like to do more to be a resource for those companies and to encourage their involvement in the Forum.
- Seeking consensus within the Forum for new requirements. I have attended meetings of the CA/Browser Forum since it started in 2005 while I was with GeoTrust. The Forum’s approach at that time was to move forward with new guidelines and official actions with the substantial consensus of all the CAs and browsers affected, trying to give consideration to the concerns of everyone if possible. Another early principle was not to let the Forum be used to give any one group an advantage over others. That’s sometimes hard to accomplish, but I still think it is the most important guiding principle if the Forum is to remain a success and be supported by all.
- Maintain a close relationship between CAs and browsers. It’s very important to maintain a close relationship and open communications between CAs and browsers so that everyone has an opportunity to be heard and have input on the final decision. I’d like to look for new ways to coordinate communications and actions among CAs and browsers.
- Clear effective dates for all new rules. On some occasions there has been confusion on when new rules will actually be effective, and also whether they will be retroactive on existing certificates and customers (e.g., reissuance of certificates after standards have changed). Maybe we should come up with two or three “templates” for how a new rule will take affect – for example, a new rule is effective only for new certs, or a new rule is effective for all new and reissued certs, or a new rule is only effective when incorporated in new audit guidelines, etc.
For years I pushed for all proposals to be submitted to the Members in a “show changes” format, and I’m glad we are now doing that. We should go a step further and require that all ballots include clear rules on effective date and retroactivity, if relevant to the ballot.
- Governance rules. We all worked hard on our governance discussions two years ago, and I drafted the resulting bylaws we use today. I think we achieved a successful balance among CAs, browsers, and public input for creating new guidelines and requirements. We now have two years’ experience with this structure, and it’s working pretty well.
- Governing Style. As you know, I can be a person of strong views on some issues, and I believe it’s best for people to express their views clearly but courteously so the discussion will move forward and reach a conclusion. With my background as a lawyer, I know how to make an argument for my position, but also how to listen to the arguments of others. In fact, listening to the arguments of others yesterday on CAA have persuaded us to support the a CAA ballot even though our own judgment runs the other way. That’s exactly what vigorous debate in the Forum should accomplish.
Having said that, association officers must always make sure they are fair to all Members and open to all points of view, and are not pushing people to any particular conclusion. If I’m ever serving the Forum as an officer, I’ll state my own views but be sure to encourage expression of all opposing views and let the Forum reach its own conclusions in a fair and open manner.
- Lower taxes and eliminate waste, etc.. I was going to conclude by saying I would lower your taxes, increase services, eliminate waste, achieve better education for our children, and cut the deficit (plus free donuts), but I realize I’m not running for Congress – so I have nothing on those issues.
Kirk Hall
Operations Director, Trust Services
Trend Micro
Candidate Statement of Robin Alden to CA/Browser Forum
Dear CABF Members,
I am standing for the post of vice-chair of the forum in the hope that I can carry on the excellent work done by Ben in his time in the role.
I have no doubt that Atilla and Kirk are capable of undertaking the role too, so your choice is a hard one.
I think that the work of the forum remains important and relevant to our industry.
We are not primarily an Internet Security forum per-se in the same way as the IETF, but the work that we do raises the bar for our corner of the IT world and I think the rest of the internet benefits from that.
There are challenges ahead for the forum, and we may yet see further changes to the structure or organization of the forum, but I am sure that it remains an important organ both of communication within the CA industry and between CAs and browsers, platforms, relying party, auditing and oversight authorities.
I have been working in the CA industry for 14 years now for Comodo CA Limited in the UK and I spend the majority of my time in overseeing the operation of our CA. Our operations are actually split between the US and the UK, so I have a foot on either side of the Atlantic – uncomfortable though that sounds.
I am a technician rather than a lawyer so my approach is bound to be different to the incumbent’s but I am prepared to dedicate the time and resource to the role to do my very best to ensure that the CABF keeps moving forward. I would be most grateful for your support.
Regards
Robin Alden M.Sc. FRI MIET
CTO – Comodo