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Audit Criteria

The CA / Browser Forum requires that all audits of Certification Authorities be performed by qualified auditors in accordance with an eligible audit scheme, such as the WebTrust® Program for Certification Authorities or ETSI. Also allowed, subject to confirmation by the browser to which a CA wishes to submit its root, are schemes that audit conformance to ISO 21188 or government audit schemes, where the CA is required by law or regulation (i.e. its Certificate Policy) to use a different internal audit scheme, provided that the audit either (a) encompasses all requirements of one of the above schemes or (b) consists of comparable criteria that are available for public review.

The CA / Browser Forum’s audit requirements are consistent with those of Mozilla, which states its audit policy in sections 8 through 17 of its CA Certificate Inclusion Policy found at https://www.mozilla.org/projects/security/certs/policy/InclusionPolicy.html.

Below are links to the respective web pages for the CABF-recognized audit frameworks of WebTrust and ETSI:

WebTrust –

Internal URL – /about/information/auditors-and-assessors/webtrust-for-cas/

External URL – http://www.webtrust.org

ETSI–

Internal URL – /about/information/auditors-and-assessors/etsi/

External URL – http://www.etsi.org/technologies-clusters/technologies/security/certification-authorities-and-other-certification-service-providers

For additional information from the CA / Browser Forum about auditing available on this website, see /about/information/auditors-and-assessors/.

Auditors and Assessors
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).