5 Benefits of Automated PKI Management Services

Public key management continues to create headaches in IT boardrooms nationwide. And it’s easy to see why. Technicians now look outside their windows and watch as hybrid employees carry business-critical hardware and software to their homes.

Add this to the surge in encrypted data and digital identities, and what you have is a perfect storm that has many certificate management systems close to breaking point. What gives?

The answer is to no longer look inward to spreadsheets and manual processes—those have outlived their usefulness. The solution for most public key management problems exists out there in automated PKI management services. Here are five reasons why:

1. On-Demand Scalability

   The complexities of key management make frequent upscaling of in-house public key capabilities a nightmare. Let’s not forget the manual addition of new identities and the deletion of expired ones, which are excruciating in their own right.

   And as most of the world (and your future customers) migrate to the web, you can only expect more digital entities.

   Once you outsource your PKI management to a service provider, providing on-demand scaling conveniently becomes their problem. With that out of the way, you can concentrate resources on more rewarding aspects of your operation.

2. Industry Expertise and Experience

   Getting industry expertise, especially in IT security, doesn’t come cheap in today’s labor market. And even if you can afford it, the best of the best often don’t exist in typical hiring pools and channels.

   Through specialization, outsourcing your certificate management allows you to tap into a broad pool of experienced technicians and professionals in PKI management. With these talents within reach, you can benefit from world-class PKI strategies, updates, and workmanship without making a single hire.

3. Automation

   It’s a tired song, but human error remains the leading cause of cyber breaches. According to Verizon’s 2022 Data Breach Investigations Report, 82% of all security breaches have a human element.

   One of the most apparent benefits of PKI outsourcing is automation. A PKI management service will automate your client certificate life cycles to eliminate the human element. What does this mean? Fewer expired certificates because Joshua had a bad day or exposure to vulnerabilities because Suzie was in a hurry.

4. Improved Compliance

   In 2022, compliance and its fines and lawsuits are taking bigger and bigger chunks of company revenue and expenditure. The shift toward privacy puts companies that have figured out their public key management at an advantage.

   What many don’t know is that your compliance is only as good as your public key infrastructure. Hence, outsourcing the technicalities of PKI means that you don’t have to worry about changing laws, vulnerabilities, and the fines and lawsuits that come with ineffective public key management.

5. Enhanced Security

   All the above points lead us to the big one: improved security. Outsourcing your public key management to the cloud has tremendous benefits for your data and overall security. Moving your root key and certificate management server to the cloud reduces human access and the vulnerabilities that arise from an in-house system. Also, reducing the human element in your systems reduces the chance of artificial mistakes, which are an eventuality in manual PKI systems.

   With the help of automated PKI management, your business can experience enhanced security, improved compliance, and on-demand scalability with a partnership of industry experts.