PKI Consortium signs MoU with ETSI

Sophia Antipolis, 1 February 2022

On 26 January PKI Consortium and ETSI signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to structure and strengthen the relationship between both organizations and foster a closer relationship.

The PKI Consortium comprises leading organizations that are committed to improve, create and collaborate on generic, industry or use-case specific policies, procedures, best practices, standards and tools that advance trust in assets and communication for everyone and everything using Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) as well as the security of the internet in general. By engaging with users, regulators, supervisory bodies and other interested or relying parties the consortium can address actual issues.

Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) defines the foundation for most modern security systems and provides Confidentiality, Integrity, Authenticity and Non-repudiation. It relies on public key cryptography, a universally accepted asymmetric technology that enables entities to securely communicate using an insecure transport or media, reliably link the data to the signatory and protects the integrity of the data while proving guarantees about the existence of the data at the time of signature creation.

Created in 2013 as the Certificate Authority Security Council (CASC) or CA Security Council in short, the original purpose was a multi-vendor industry advocacy group to conduct research, promote Internet security standards and educate the public on Internet security issues. In 2021 the CASC was restructured and renamed to The Public Key Infrastructure Consortium.

PKI membership is currently available to publicly trusted Certificate Authorities, they are preparing to admit non CA members such as regulators, supervisory bodies and other interested parties.

This MoU will allow PKI to collaborate closely with the ETSI Technical Committee on Electronic Signatures and Infrastructures.