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What is Cloud-Based PKIaaS and Why Does it Matter?

Public key infrastructure (PKI) is evolving. Enterprises are increasingly moving away from expensive, on-site PKI and towards easily scalable, flexible, demand-driven cloud solutions. We know you’ve got questions about how cloud-based PKI can enhance your cybersecurity posture, and we’ve got the answers.

What is PKI?

PKI allows for the secure, encrypted transfer of information between users, systems, customers, applications, and devices. It works by creating unique, secure, linked keys (public keys and private keys) through complex algorithms. Data is encrypted using a public key before it is sent across a network so that even if data interception occurs, the encryption means it’s unreadable. When the data arrives at its intended destination, the public key’s matching private key decrypts it. The receiving system can then use the decrypted data. PKI is essential to any organization in reducing data risks, controlling access, preventing breaches, and securing against bad actors.

What Are the Options for Implementing PKI in an Organization?

There are two main ways to implement PKI across the enterprise:

  • Build an in-house PKI system on local infrastructure, using locally installed software to create, manage, and distribute keys
  • Use an existing cloud-based PKI solution to provide on-demand PKI services to your business

Our recommendation is to use a cloud-based PKI service for several reasons, as listed below.

What Are the Advantages of Cloud-Based PKI?

Cloud-based PKI lets you easily centralize best-practice key creation, management, and distribution, scale PKI services to meet business demands, and use an on-demand fee structure to meet your security budgets.

How Can I Ensure Quality and Compliance Requirements Using Cloud-Based PKI?

One of the advantages of cloud-based PKI is that these solutions are continually updated using real-world learning and the latest security and encryption research. Cloud-based solutions are also patched against vulnerabilities regularly, and those improvements are immediately accessible to your organization. That means you don’t need to waste precious security resources on identifying and upgrading locally installed PKI systems.

Additionally, PKI solutions must be fully compliant with the stringent compliance standards and regulations — including policy and procedure reviews and security audit requirements. Reputable cloud-based PKI systems will adhere to best-in-class security standards and provide better cyber risk management.

How Can Cloud-Based PKI Businesses Be More Flexible?

With cloud-based PKI, you only use the services you need. As business needs evolve, cloud-based PKI can adapt to new requirements without reimplementing the infrastructure. That makes it easier to implement security requirements into new projects, products, and services. This flexibility expands to the workforce and customer base through the instant creation and deletion of security keys — as these users move in and out of the business.

How Does Cloud-Based PKI Help Control Security Budgets and Costs?

Cloud-based PKI is suitable for tighter budgets in a couple of ways:

  • No upfront investment: Using on-premise, locally installed PKI requires a significant upfront capital cost and a robust business case to justify the expense. With cloud-based PKI, there’s no need to invest in PKI infrastructure and software ahead of time.
  • Pay for what you need: Cloud-based PKI is demand-based, enabling the scalability of services and costs in step with overall security strategy and goals

How Can HID Global Help Meet Your Cloud-Based PKI Needs?

HID Global provides an industry-leading, cloud-based PKI system: HydrantID. HID HydrantID’s cloud-based private PKI-as-a-service enables organizations to quickly create and deploy their own enterprise private PKI trust hierarchies to secure their networks, IT systems, and IoT devices.

Download our white paper on The Role of PKI in Protecting Enterprise Networks and learn more about how HID HydrantID PKIaaS can transform your PKI management.

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Mrugesh Chandarana is Product Management Director for Identity and Access Management Solutions at HID Global, where he focuses on IoT and PKI solutions. He has more than ten years of cybersecurity industry experience in areas such as risk management, threat and vulnerability management, application security and PKI. He has held product management positions at RiskSense, WhiteHat Security (acquired by NTT Security), and RiskVision (acquired by Resolver, Inc.).

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