The Department of Defense will cease the issuance of software Public Key Infrastructure certificates to its “Five Eyes” partner nations, DOD Chief Information Officer Teri Takai said.
Starting Thursday, the FVEY partner nations that interact with the DOD on the Nonsecure Internet Protocol Router Network — Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the United Kingdom — will be required to purchase Medium Token Assurance PKI certificates from external DOD certificate authority vendors.
Software PKI certificates that have already been issued by DOD to FVEY partner nations will be accepted until the end of May 2013.
The decision was outlined in a May 8 memo, “PKI Interoperability with FVEY Partner Nations on the NIPRNet,” that describes that under a Combined Joint Multilateral Master Military Information Exchange Memorandum of Understanding, DOD had agreed to issue FVEY partner nations software PKI certificates for three years. This was to provide the partner nations time to develop their own PKIs.
