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Application for Membership

For CAs and Browsers Interested in Joining the CA / Browser Forum:

Browser manufacturers or developers of software that includes trusted root certificates may wish to consider joining the CA/Browser Forum.  Our Bylaws require that your organization “…produces a software product intended for use by the general public for browsing the Web securely.”

Our bylaws provide that CA members shall meet at least one of the following criteria:

  • Issuing CA:- The member organization operates a certification authority that has a current and successful WebTrust for CAs audit, or ETSI 102042 or ETSI 101456 audit report prepared by a properly-qualified auditor, and that actively issues certificates to Web servers that are openly accessible from the Internet using any one of the mainstream browsers.
  • Root CA:- The member organization operates a certification authority that has a current and successful WebTrust for CAs, or ETSI 102042 or ETSI 101456 audit report prepared by a properly-qualified auditor, and that actively issues certificates to subordinate CAs that, in turn, actively issue certificates to Web servers that are openly accessible from the Internet using any one of the mainstream browsers.

Click this Membership Application section of our “Information for Potential Members” page.

Membership
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).