OU Field to be deprecated for InCommon Certificates Starting July 1, 2022
Future SSL certificates will not include a value in the OU (organization unit) field. Later, the OU field will be removed(1) entirely. For the vast majority of us this change has no impact.
If you are utilizing InCommon SSL certificates(2) for your web server or other purposes, and if you have automated processes that depend on the OU field value, please review your processes.
Key dates:
Effective July 1st, 2022, newly issued InCommon certificates will have unused OU fields. After July 1st, if your CSR (Certificate Signing Request) specifies a OU value, the resulting certificate will not include the value.
Effective September 1st, 2022, the CA/B (Certificate Authority/Browser(3)) forum mandates that the OU field be unused and deprecated for all newly issued certificates. InCommon certificates are issued by Sectigo.
Footnotes:
(1) For more information on the Sectigo announcement:
(2) For more information on obtaining InCommon SSL certifications from ITS Site Licensing:
o <https://www.hawaii.edu/sitelic/incommon/>
(3) For more information on the CA/B forum: