External certification authority

Overview
The External Certification Authority (ECA) is a program sponsored by the DoD PKI. It consists of a Root Certification Authority (Root CA) maintained at the same facility that operates the DoD PKI Root CA, and Subordinate CAs maintained by vendors. Vendors wishing to become ECAs must pass a rigorous process that ensures their certificates are interoperable with the DoD PKI and that the policies and procedures they use to issue certificates are sufficient to meet requirements specified in the ECA Certificate Policy (CP), which has been approved by the DoD Certificate Policy Management Working Group (CPMWG).

Source

 * IASE, "Frequently Asked Questions" (full-text).