Proposed new EKMI-TC charter

[Arshad Noor <arshad.noor@strongauth.com>]

All,

In the last few months, the PKI-TC has been drifting.  This is not
specific to OASIS, but is a worldwide phenomenon in the field of
PKI itself:

- the IETF has been talking about the PKIX committee closing down
   for quite some time, given that their charter has been addressed;
- Stephen Wilson reports that the Asia PKI Forum has determined
   that all the technical work related to PKI has been completed and
   that their charter needs to be broadened; thus they are getting
   into the field of e-commerce security rather than focus on just
   PKI;
- Stephen Wilson also reports that Japan is pulling out of the
   Asia PKI Forum given that they feel all the work in PKI has been
   done;
- our own TC members report that no one is doing any architectural
   work around PKI internally, and are focused more on just using
   PKI and operating it;

Given these data-points, it is my belief that the PKI-TC needs to
address its own future.  One way of addressing it is to broaden
its charter to focus on enterprise level key-management, which
address how cryptographic keys - symmetric and asymmetric - are
managed in an enterprise across applications, operating systems,
databases, etc.

Many companies are focused on encrypting data, but are perplexed
with how to manage symmetric keys.  Many don't realize how PKI
can be used to solve that problem.

While I had recently proposed the creation of a new TC to address
symmetric key-management, it is my belief that companies need to
address all cryptographic key-management as a discipline rather
than at the component level.

Consequently, I would like to discuss two items:

1) the closing of the PKI-TC; and
2) the creation of a new Enterprise Key Management Infrastructure
TC (EKMI-TC) that woud address the combined key-management goals.

I am attaching a DRAFT of the charter for this new TC and would
like to solicit feedback on it.  If you (your organization)
believes that these goals are useful, I would like to solicit
your support for this TC to get it approved per OASIS rules.

http://www.oasis-open.org/apps/org/workgroup/pki/download.php/20043/EKMI-Charter-DRAFT-01.pdf

Thank you.

Arshad Noor
StrongAuth, Inc.

dee.schur@oasis-open.org wrote:
> PKI TC Minutes 16 August 2006
> 
>  -- Mrs. Dee Schur
> 
> The document named OASIS PKI TC Minutes 16 August 2006
> (2006-08-16-PKI-TCMinutesDRAFT.doc) has been submitted by Mrs. Dee Schur to
> the OASIS Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) TC document repository.
> 
> Document Description:
> 
> 
> View Document Details:
> http://www.oasis-open.org/apps/org/workgroup/pki/document.php?document_id=19942
> 
> Download Document:  
> http://www.oasis-open.org/apps/org/workgroup/pki/download.php/19942/2006-08-16-PKI-TCMinutesDRAFT.doc
> 
>