Ballot Forum-14 – Creation of S/MIME Certificates Working Group v2

Ballot outcome

• Ballot Forum-14 created the S/MIME Certificates Working Group.
• The ballot passed.
• It was proposed by Tim Hollebeek of DigiCert and endorsed by Wayne Thayer of Mozilla and Clint Wilson of Apple.

Purpose

• The ballot established a working group to develop and maintain standards for S/MIME certificates.
• The stated goals included a uniform certificate profile for publicly-trusted S/MIME certificates and validation requirements for those certificates.
• The charter says the working group is chartered indefinitely until dissolved under Bylaw 5.3.2(c).

Main charter provisions

• The working group is authorized to discuss, adopt, and maintain policies, frameworks, and standards related to issuance and management of S/MIME certificates by third-party CAs under a publicly trusted root.
• Primary deliverables include:
  • Verification of control over email addresses
  • Key management and certificate lifecycle, coordinated with other Forum working groups
  • Certificate profiles for S/MIME certificates and issuing CA certificates
  • CA operational practices, physical and logical security
• The charter also allows the working group to address identity validation for natural persons and legal entities in the context of S/MIME certificates.
• Deliverables are limited to certificates that contain the emailProtection EKU or are technically capable of such issuance.

Membership and voting

• Voting members are divided into Certificate Issuers and Certificate Consumers.
• Certificate Issuers must have a qualifying public audit report or attestation statement and must actively issue S/MIME certificates treated as valid by at least one qualifying Certificate Consumer.
• Certificate Consumers must produce and maintain a mail user agent or email service provider that processes S/MIME certificates.
• Initial members require public approval by at least two-thirds of the organizations on the Chair’s proposed qualifying member list.
• If the initial list fails, the Chair may revise it and hold a second vote.
• If an initial list of members cannot be agreed upon, the working group is dissolved.
• The charter sets voting thresholds of two-thirds approval from Certificate Issuers and more than 50% approval from Certificate Consumers, with at least one favorable vote from each class.

Procedure and timing

• Discussion period: 2020-06-01 16:40:00 EDT to after 2020-06-08 16:40:00 EDT
• Voting period: 2020-06-08 16:50:00 EDT to 2020-06-15 16:50:00 EDT
• The ballot page states voting has ended and the ballot passes.