Date: Mon, 11 May 1998 08:22:42 -0400 From: Robert Hettinga Subject: DCSB: Michael Baum; PKI and the Commercial CA [Because Mr. Baum became ill at the last minute this February, we have rescheduled him for the upcoming DCSB meeting... --RAH] The Digital Commerce Society of Boston Presents Michael S. Baum VeriSign, Inc. PKI Requirements from a Commercial CA's Perspective Tuesday, June 2, 1998 12 - 2 PM The Downtown Harvard Club of Boston One Federal Street, Boston, MA Requirements for the provision of commercial certification products and services are under consideration by many companies. Similarly, efforts to regulate certification authorities (CAs) and public key infrastructure (PKI) are proliferating by many domestic and foreign governments. Underlying many of these efforts is the intention to assess and assure quality and trustworthiness, and yet the nature, scope and regime to accomplish these goals remain elusive or at least have been balkanized. This presentation will consider CA and PKI requirements from the experiences and perspective of a commercial CA. It will survey current approaches to ascertaining quality and performance as well as their limitations. It will then propose a path forward. Many of these issues are present real challenges to both the CAs and the user community. A lively dialog is welcomed. Michael S. Baum is Vice President of Practices and External Affairs, VeriSign, Inc. His responsibilities include developing practices and controls under which VeriSign conducts its public Digital ID and private label certificate operations. Mr. Baum is the Chair of the Information Security Committee, and Council Member of the Section of Science and Technology, of the American Bar Association. He is Chairman of the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) ETERMS Working Party and a Vice Chairman of the ICC's Electronic Commerce Project, a delegate to the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law on behalf of the ICC. He is a member of various digital signature legislative advisory committees. Mr. Baum is co-author (with Warwick Ford) of Secure Electronic Commerce (Prentice Hall, 1997), author of Federal Certification Authority Liability and Policy - Law and Policy of Certificate-Based Public Key and Digital Signatures (NIST, 1994), co-author of Electronic Contracting, Publishing and EDI Law (Wiley Law Publications, 1991), and contributing author to EDI and the Law (Blenheim Online, 1989), and the author of diverse information security publications including the first American articles on EDI law. He was honored as an EDI Pioneer in 1993 (EDI Forum) and was the Recipient of the National Notary Association's 1995 Achievement Award. He is a member of the Massachusetts Bar. This meeting of the Digital Commerce Society of Boston will be held on Tuesday, June 2, 1998, from 12pm - 2pm at the Downtown Branch of the Harvard Club of Boston, on One Federal Street. The price for lunch is $32.50. This price includes lunch, room rental, various A/V hardware, and the speaker's lunch. ;-). The Harvard Club *does* have dress code: jackets and ties for men (and no sneakers or jeans), and "appropriate business attire" (whatever that means), for women. Fair warning: since we purchase these luncheons in advance, we will be unable to refund the price of your lunch if the Club finds you in violation of the dress code. We will attempt to record this meeting for sale on CD/R, and to put it on the web in RealAudio format, at some future date. We need to receive a company check, or money order, (or, if we *really* know you, a personal check) payable to "The Harvard Club of Boston", by Saturday, May 30th, or you won't be on the list for lunch. Checks payable to anyone else but The Harvard Club of Boston will have to be sent back. Checks should be sent to Robert Hettinga, 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, Massachusetts, 02131. Again, they *must* be made payable to "The Harvard Club of Boston", in the amount of $32.50. Please include your e-mail address, so that we can send you a confirmation If anyone has questions, or has a problem with these arrangements (We've had to work with glacial A/P departments more than once, for instance), please let us know via e-mail, and we'll see if we can work something out. Upcoming speakers for DCSB are: July Rodney Thayer IPSEC and Digital Commerce August TBA September TBA October Peter Cassidy Intellectual Property Rights Management TBA Jeremey Barrett Digital Bearer Settlement We are actively searching for future speakers. If you are in Boston on the first Tuesday of the month, and you would like to make a presentation to the Society, please send e-mail to the DCSB Program Commmittee, care of Robert Hettinga, . For more information about the Digital Commerce Society of Boston, send "info dcsb" in the body of a message to . If you want to subscribe to the DCSB e-mail list, send "subscribe dcsb" in the body of a message to . We look forward to seeing you there! Cheers, Robert Hettinga Moderator, The Digital Commerce Society of Boston ----------------- Robert Hettinga (rah@shipwright.com), Philodox e$, 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire' The e$ Home Page: http://www.shipwright.com/