Important Announcement:
- The Organizational Unit (OU) Field within an SSL/TLS (website) Certificate, https://www.ssl.com/certificates/ will be deprecated effective September 1, 2022, at the request of the CA/Browser Forum.
- SSL.com will discontinue the field effective August 1, 2022, in order for customers to get accustomed to the change.
Why Is This Occurring?
The Certificate Authority/Browser Forum (CA/B) has been investigating ways to further strengthen the validation of an SSL/TLS (website) Certificate.- While other methods were not adequate, attention was focused on discontinuing the OU Field.
- The Field is ambiguous as it is an internal label with little text standardization.
- The field cannot be validated effectively and could be misused.
- SSL.com adheres to the operational standards ratified by the Certificate Authority/Browser (CA/B) Forum.
- As with all the certificates issued by SSL.com, it is in the best interest of SSL’s customers to ensure compliance.
- As with all SSL.com products, our adherence to standards, quality, and customer satisfaction remains our top priority.
Moving Forward:
- Customers are urged to review their internal Certificate Management practices, ensuring no dependency on the field moving forward.
- Certificates issued prior to August 1, 2022, will remain valid.
- Customers who have known dependencies on the OU field and cannot resolve it are urged to reprocess and reissue before July 31, 2022, to ensure functionality.
- Effective August 1, 2022, SSL.com will no longer present the field for use.
Information is provided:
- To alert our customers to the change.
- Provide time to redesign any processes currently contingent on the field.
Additional Information is available:
- CA Browser Ballot SC47v2: Sunset subject: organizational unit name | CAB Forum
- https://www.ssl.com/ – Lower right corner is the entry point to the SSL.com Chatline.
- Our Support Team is standing by to assist.
