ATE Organisation Basics

State of this document

This document is a work in progress while the Assurance Team is running the ATE 2011 Upgrade. Please contact ate@cacert.org if you want to help.

Preface

This page is the starting point for community members who want to organize an Assurer Training Event and help the Community and the Audit. CAcert needs a lot of help with ATE organization as most of the work can only be done by local members.

Why organise an ATE

The Assurer Training Events are a yearly series of events that serve the purpose of fulfilling point 2.y of David Ross' Certificate Authority Review Checklist:

The CP details how the CA verifies that RAs operate in accord with the CA's policies.

Explained, this means, that to fulfill audit criteria, CAcert has to explain how it makes sure all Assurers act according to the CPS (and thus to the Assurance Policy). The way CAcert ensures Assurer integrity consists of:

Assurer Training
Co-Audit

These two components make up the basis of the Assurer Training Events, which are our way to train and co-audit assurers globally with the help of the community.

Why we need the help of the community

The last audit, which was canceled mid 2009, taught us that the auditor alone cannot run the audit. Instead, the community as a whole has to run the audit, offering clear statements and concepts to the auditor. This requirement led to the concept of the ATEs, which are our way of bringing information across and train assurers world-wide. Obviously, the inner CAcert core contributors cannot achieve this on their own.

Basic tasks when organising an ATE

This is a rough to-do list for organising an Assurer Training Event. Below you will find links to more detailed information.

Contact ate@cacert.org to notify the ATE team of your plans to organise an event.
Create a wiki page (see Organisation Guidelines!)
Find a location for the number of assurers you expect to take part.
Discuss possible dates with the owners of the venue.
Pass the information to ate@cacert.org so we can find out if we have personel available.
Fix the location and date and send the final details to ate@cacert.org so we can send out invitations.