X9 PKI is a shared private trust model for U.S. finance, not a public WebPKI replacement, with unique benefits and tradeoffs.

Tim Callan
Tim Callan has over 20 years of experience in the SSL and PKI technology spaces. Tim leads Sectigo's conformance with industry and regulatory requirements including browser root programs, WebTrust, CA/Browser Forum, and more. Tim is instrumental in driving initiatives to improve certificate agility and successful issuance. A founding member of the CA/Browser Forum and current vice-chair for one of its working groups, Tim is creator and co-host of Root Causes: A PKI and Security Podcast, the world’s most popular podcast dedicated to digital certificates. With 400+ episodes published, Tim is on the forefront of explaining trends that will be essential to the IT professionals, including shortening certificate lifespans and the coming change to post-quantum cryptography.
Recent posts by Tim Callan
Recent announcements from Google and Cloudflare have declared new 2029 deadlines for full post quantum cryptography (PQC) migration. Bas Westerbaan explains the rationale behind Cloudflare's decision and discusses implications for other enterprises., asking "Are you a gambler?"
Repeat guest Bas Westerbaan of Cloudflare joins us to explore the role of Merkle Tree Certificates (MTCs) in private CA scenarios with an eye toward where they will be needed and where traditional PKI will be better suited.
The US-based X9 financial industry consortium has created a server certificate. We explain what X9 certificates are and suitable use cases for this certificate type.
Dustin Moody of NIST joins us to discuss Merkle Tree Certificates (MTCs) and the NIST position on them.
Repeat guest Bas Westerbaan of Cloudflare joins us to explain the PLANTS working group in IETF, which is driving standards around post quantum cryptography (PQC) and Merkle Tree Certificates (MTC). Bas explains the path to becoming a final standard, where we are in this process, and how you can get involved.
It's reasonable to believe that Merkle Tree Certificates (MTC) and traditional RSA will co-exist on the same servers for years, if not decades, during the transition to post quantum cryptography (PQC). Bas Westerbaan of Cloudflare joins us in this episode to explore the possibility of quantum downgrade attacks and what we can do about them.
We are joined by Dustin Moody of NIST to go over the current state of the various post quantum cryptography (PQC) contests, including upcoming FIPS standards for Falcon (FN-DSA) and HQC, other Round 4 algorithms, the digital signing algorithm (DSA) On Ramp, isogeny, and future cryptographic exploration.
We are joined by Bas Westerbaan of Cloudflare to explain considerations and requirements for use of Merkle Tree Certificates (MTCs). This includes full adoption of TLS 1.3, offering PQC and RSA at the same time, the imperative value of automation, and running production MTC in 2027.