The operating system must only allow the use of DoD PKI-established certificate authorities for verification of the establishment of protected sessions.
Untrusted Certificate Authorities (CA) can issue certificates, but they may be issued by organizations or individuals that seek to compromise DoD systems or by organizations with insufficient security controls. If the CA used for verifying the certificate is not a DoD-approved CA, trust of this CA has not been established. The DoD will only accept PKI-certificates obtained from a DoD-approved internal or external certificate authority. Reliance on CAs for the establishment of secure sessions includes, for example, the use of SSL/TLS certificates.