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About the CA/Browser Forum

The CA/Browser Forum is governed by Bylaws, which were first adopted in 2012. The Bylaws set forth the qualifications for Membership in the Forum, and the types of participation that are allowed for non-voting members, interested parties, and others.  The Forum is an unincorporated association of separate organizations.

All active participants in CA/Browser Forum activities must agree to the Forum’s Intellectual Property Rights Policy, also adopted in 2012.

The Forum elects Officers — a Chair, who serves a two-year term, and a Vice Chair. The Chair and Vice Chair manage the Meetings of the Forum and act as the Forum’s official representatives.

The Forum communicates through a variety of means, such as email lists, telephone calls, face-to-face meetings, and this web site. As stated generally in section 1 of the Forum’s Bylaws, the CA/Browser Forum advances industry best practices to improve the ways that certificates are used to the benefit of Internet users and the security of their communications.

Latest releases
Server Certificate Requirements
SC095v3: Clean-up 2025 - Apr 2, 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).