Ballot NS-003 is proposed by Clint Wilson of Apple and endorsed by Trevoli 
Ponds-White of Amazon and David Kluge of Google Trust Services.

Please note, this ballot has set a 2 week Discussion Period.

Purpose of Ballot

This ballot proposes a comprehensive restructuring of the Network and 
Certificate System Security Requirements (NCSSRs), excepting Section 4. The 
current structure of the document has proven to be challenging for creating 
ballots, contains duplicated requirements, and separates similar requirements 
across the document. These issues have led to inefficiencies in managing and 
implementing security standards. Therefore, this proposal aims to streamline 
the document's structure, eliminate redundancies, improve comprehensibility, 
and enhance clarity and coherence.

Reasons for Proposal:

Complexity in Ballot Creation: The current document structure can make it 
difficult to create and manage ballots efficiently, leading to somewhat awkward 
updating processes, abandoned ballots, and a lack of confidence that ballots 
effect the intended changes.
Redundancy: Over time, some parts of the NCSSRs have touched on the same topic, 
leading to some duplication across the document and further to confusion and 
inconsistency in implementation.
Fragmentation: Similar requirements for different parts of a CA’s 
NCSSR-relevant infrastructure are scattered throughout the document, making it 
somewhat more difficult for to locate and comprehend a complete picture of 
these requirements effectively.
Minor Issues: The document contains other, more minor issues that also impede 
its usability and effectiveness, such as missing definitions, unclear list 
structures, and requirements that are more optional than they may currently 
appear.

Benefits of the Updated Document Structure:

Enhanced Clarity: The revised structure should improve the clarity and 
coherence of the document, making the requirements it represents easier to 
understand, as well as result in greater consistency when implementing or 
assessing its security requirements.
Future Updates: A more granular document structure should improve the process 
of creating and managing ballots in the future. Similarly, the improved 
proximity of related requirements should hopefully aid in identifying the areas 
the NCSSRs can most benefit from further attention.
Grouping and De-duplication of Similar Requirements: By consolidating 
duplicated requirements, the updated document should make it much easier to 
find, comprehend, assess, and implement related requirements.
Clearer Recommendations: The updated document includes a number of additional 
“SHOULD”-type stipulations, clarifying some of the language in the current 
NCSSRs such that it’s easier to identify where the NCSSRs impose a strict 
requirement as opposed to a strong recommendation.

Overall, this ballot proposal seeks to address existing challenges in updating 
the current version of the NCSSRs and pave the way for future improvements to 
the NCSSRs.

MOTION BEGINS

This ballot modifies the “Network and Certificate System Security Requirements” 
as follows, based on version 1.7:

https://github.com/cabforum/netsec/compare/c62a2f88e252de5c79b101fa3c9e9c536388639a...8bd66d27c07e30d1f4d9e6dd57b075bca499bf2e

MOTION ENDS

The procedure for approval of this ballot is as follows:

Discussion Period (14+ days)

Start Time: 2024-April-09 16:00 UTC
End Time: After 2024-April-23 15:59 UTC

Voting Period (7 days)

Start Time: TBD
End Time: TBD

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