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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 Unless the motion is withdrawn during the review period, the voting period will start immediately thereafter and will close at 2100 UTC on 3 Aug ’12.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
SC-089: Mass Revocation Planning - Aug 26, 2025

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
v1.0.12 - Ballot SMC014 - Oct 13, 2025

This ballot introduces requirements that a Certificate Issuer MUST deploy DNSSEC validation back to the IANA DNSSEC root trust anchor on all DNS queries associated with CAA record lookups performed by the Primary Network Perspective, effective March 15, 2026. The ballot is intended to maintain consistency in the S/MIME Baseline Requirements with the requirements of Ballot SC-085 which implemented identical requirements in the TLS Baseline Requirements. Note: SC-085 also introduced requirements in TLS Baseline Requirements for the use of DNSSEC in domain control validation. These requirements are automatically adopted in the S/MIME BR by the email domain control methods that include a normative reference to section 3.2.2.4 of the TLS Baseline Requirements. The draft also includes minor corrections to web links in the text. This ballot is proposed by Stephen Davidson (DigiCert) and endorsed by Client Wilson (Apple) and Ashish Dhiman (GlobalSign).

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