1. Introduction
Mike Lambert, Director of the Messaging Forum, introduced
the meeting with a brief introduction to The Open Group, the Messaging Forum and the
objectives of the meeting (which arose out of a meeting in April 2004 in Brussels,
Belgium, to consider activities in Europe).
2. The European Bridge-CA Project
Charles Blauner, from Deutsche Bank, gave an overview
of the business objectives and overall architecture of the European Bridge-CA.
The European Bridge-CA is a private partnership between a number of European companies,
mostly in Germany, to address the problems associated with interoperability among PKIs and
applications, without a hierarchical structure and without n:n cross-certification.
Stephan Wappler, from Noventum Consulting, went into a little more technical
detail about the way that the service operates and the current capabilities. He
explained how the European Bridge-CA addressed the four major requirements of a bridge
infrastructure:
- Generation of trust relationships (trustworthy exchange of certificates)
- Access to participants and/or user certificates (directory service)
- Validation of certificates (validation service)
- Generation of a contractual framework
3. The US Federal Bridge-CA
Judith Spencer from GSA, and chair of the Federal Industry Credentialing
Committee, presented the current state-of-play
with the US Federal Bridge-CA. This covered the background to the Federal Bridge-CA,
the architecture, and a growing list of cross-certified organizations. The presentation
introduced a group that is already working on transatlantic issues, the Transatlantic
Secure Collaboration Program (TSCP) (see link below), and included a list of issues that
need to be addressed:
- Compound mapping variance - different degrees of compatibility
- Undocumented practices - accepted or de facto standards within specific
communities
- Compatibility of relying parties - technical incompatibility
- Use of constraints - limiting name form or path length
- Liability
- Incompatible governance structures
Finally, Bill Burr, from NIST, presented his view of Bridge-to-Bridge
International Cross-Certification issues. He talked about the future of the Federal
PKI, and some FIPS that define a common policy framework, plus the transition to stronger
encryption. His list of cross-certification issues includes:
- Legal and general certificate framework
- How many certificates? Can we include digital signature and non-repudiation in the same
certificate?
- Strategy for 2048-bit keys and 256-bit hashes
- Naming and name constraints
- Directories
- Path discovery
- Scalable validation and status
Between July 2004 and the meeting in New Orleans in October 2004, research will be
carried out to determine:
- Whether the list of issues from this meeting is complete
- The extent to which other groups are already working on the issues identified
There will be a follow-up session during the October 2004 meeting to review the results
of this research and plan future activities within the Forum.
