Keyfactor vs Entrust
Enterprise PKI & Cryptographic Management Compared
Compare Keyfactor vs Entrust across PKI ownership, CA flexibility, discovery, automation, deployment models, and future readiness to help you determine the best fit for your environment.
See Keyfactor in Action
Request a personalized demo with our PKI experts
Powering Leading Enterprises Across the Globe
What We Stand For
Why Choose Keyfactor
Keyfactor helps enterprise teams establish and maintain digital trust across every machine identity. From private PKI to certificate lifecycle automation and cryptographic discovery, the platform is built to secure cloud, on-prem and hybrid environments, DevOps, and connected devices at scale.
More Freedom Without Vendor Lock-In
Keyfactor helps teams automate across public and private CAs without anchoring lifecycle strategy to one vendor’s PKI, HSM, or commercial roadmap. This enables easier CA changes, better business continuity, and more flexibility as trust requirements evolve.
Broader Visibility Across the Crypto Estate
Keyfactor helps security and PKI teams inventory certificates, keys, and cryptographic assets across hybrid environments so blind spots do not turn into outages, audit findings, or migration surprises.
Faster Time-to-Value in Mixed Environments
Keyfactor’s orchestration model and integration ecosystem help teams automate across on-prem, cloud, network, DevOps, and device environments without having to standardize the rest of their cryptographic stack first.
Feature Comparison
Core Platform Capabilities at a Glance
This comparison shows how Keyfactor and Entrust differ across core cryptographic security and certificate lifecycle capabilities, including CA flexibility, discovery, automation, deployment model, and operating model.
Keyfactor
Entrust
Platform focus
End-to-end machine identity platform: modern PKI, certificate lifecycle automation, cryptographic discovery, and code signing
Entrust spans private and managed PKI, some certificate lifecycle management, key and secrets management, HSMs, and related signing and timestamping services
PKI ownership
Offers modern CA software (EJBCA Enterprise), managed PKI, certificate lifecycle automation and cryptographic discovery in one portfolio
Offers private PKI software, managed PKI, and PKIaaS as part of its broader cryptographic security portfolio
CA ecosystem
CA-agnostic across major public, private, and cloud-based CAs, with flexibility to add or switch providers over time
Entrust’s CA Gateway supports its own CAs, plus DigiCert, EJBCA, Microsoft CA, Sectigo, and legacy ECS; broader CA strategies should be evaluated against the relatively limited integration model
Deployment flexibility
Deployable on-prem, in the cloud, as-a-service, as-an-appliance, hybrid or in containers
Supports self-hosted and container-based deployment, pre-packaged virtual appliance models, managed PKI, and PKIaaS
Discovery & visibility
Continuous discovery and inventory across certificates, keys, and cryptographic assets
Certificate Manager relies on network discovery and imports from CA databases and cloud services; Compliance Manager adds some visibility into keys, secrets, and certificates
Automation & integrations
One-to-many orchestration with pre-built integrations and CA-agnostic automation across hybrid environments
Built-in destinations for HashiCorp Vault, IIS, Apache, AWS Certificate Manager, Azure Key Vault, F5, NGINX, and SFTP, plus ACME, cert-manager, and MDM enrollment patterns
HSM and cryptographic stack
Works across existing and expanding trust environments without requiring teams to standardize on a single CA or HSM stack first
Known HSM heritage with support for nShield and Thales Luna
Commercial model
Predictable and straightforward platform pricing designed for scale
Enterprise buying can span software, managed PKI or PKIaaS, and HSM or service components, so teams should verify what is included in the specific package
Future readiness
Built for long-term crypto-agility and PQC transition planning
Invests in PQC and crypto-agility by including post-quantum key types for CSP
Last updated Q1 2025 · Based on publicly available information
Keyfactor vs Entrust
Keyfactor
Keyfactor is purpose-built for enterprise PKI and cryptographic lifecycle management, supporting certificates, keys, and cryptographic assets across public and private CAs, cloud platforms, DevOps pipelines, connected devices, and on-prem environments. This gives teams centralized control and automation beyond basic certificate procurement.
Entrust
The Cryptographic Security Platform combines private PKI, limited certificate lifecycle management, key and secrets management, compliance management, and HSM-backed cryptographic services. Since selling its public certificate business to Sectigo in 2025, Entrust’s product emphasis centers on private and managed PKI.
Keyfactor
Keyfactor is designed to let organizations standardize lifecycle automation without forcing certificate strategy into a single CA. Teams can add, switch, or combine public, private, and cloud-based CAs as requirements change.
Entrust
Leans on third-party CA support including DigiCert, EJBCA, Microsoft CA, Sectigo, and legacy ECS alongside Entrust. Organizations evaluating long-term strategy should compare how much openness, portability, and integration breadth they want over time.
Keyfactor
Keyfactor provides continuous discovery and inventory of certificates, keys, and cryptographic assets across networks, cloud, infrastructure, and connected environments. This helps teams see risk earlier and act before outages or security issues occur.
Entrust
Entrust has certificate network discovery, automated imports from CA databases and cloud services, and Compliance Manager visibility into keys, secrets, and certificates. Buyers should compare how comprehensive and operationally unified the visibility is across mixed-vendor estates and plans for growth.
Keyfactor
Keyfactor delivers deep, CA-agnostic automation across issuance, renewal, rotation, revocation, and delivery, with orchestration designed for large hybrid environments. This reduces manual work and helps teams support shorter certificate lifecycles.
Entrust
Entrust supports automation to destinations such as Vault, IIS, Apache, AWS Certificate Manager, Azure Key Vault, F5, NGINX, and SFTP, plus ACME, cert-manager, and MDM or WSTEP enrollment patterns. It can automate some enterprise workflows, but teams should compare whether they want a broader one-to-many orchestration model or if an Entrust-only operation is enough.
Keyfactor
Keyfactor’s flexible deployment options across on-prem, cloud, SaaS, and hybrid environments give enterprises room to align PKI operations with regulatory, network, and ownership requirements. Keyfactor is trusted by large enterprises managing high-volume machine identity environments.
Entrust
Entrust claims self-hosted and containerized deployment, pre-packaged virtual appliance models, managed PKI, PKIaaS, and marketplace presence. Its fit is strongest for organizations that already value Entrust’s PKI and HSM heritage and want a consolidated cryptographic control plane.
Keyfactor
Keyfactor is built for long-term cryptographic agility, helping organizations prepare for shorter certificate lifecycles, algorithm changes, and post-quantum transitions without disruptive platform rework.
Entrust
Entrust is investing in crypto-agility and PQC and includes some post-quantum key types. The more meaningful comparison is how each platform supports mixed-vendor inventory, migration, and operational change over time.
Keyfactor
Enterprise-grade onboarding and support are backed by deep PKI expertise and a global customer base across regulated industries. Keyfactor is often selected by organizations that want a specialist platform built around machine identities and enterprise PKI.
Entrust
Entrust remains a credible incumbent with decades of PKI and HSM experience, broad international presence, strong compliance orientation, and deep roots in regulated sectors. That makes it a serious option – especially for teams already standardized on Entrust technologies, with no plans for expansion on this front.
Industry leaders ensure digital trust in a post quantum world
Millions
of certificates issued across services and workloads
Dozens
of engineering hours saved through automation
Our previous PKI solution required manual management of certificates. Every single piece was human-driven …With few checks and balances, we had very little control around who was requesting, issuing, and renewing, which was a huge blind spot
10x
reduction in software signing costs
80%
decrease in key ceremony costs
Before we engaged with Keyfactor, we had a purpose-built solution for firmware and a SaaS solution for software. They really didn’t know each other, they weren’t scalable, and they were expensive to operate and maintain.
50%
reduction in self-signed certificates identified and eliminated
350,000+
active certificates managed enterprise-wide
As we developed certificate lifecycle management systems internally, we found out that it was much more efficient to do it in the cloud. When it was time to switch to cloud based PKI, we went with Keyfactor because of the ease of transition over to cloud hosted products.
1,000+
corporate devices secured
100%
managed PKI infrastructure
We were struggling with automation. Renewing certificates across less connected or secure networks was especially difficult – and the risk of outages was always looming.
Common Questions
Frequently Asked Questions
Ready to See the Difference?
Explore More Resources
CERTIFICATE AUTOMATION
47 days isn’t enough time
WHITEPAPER
Turn Cryptographic Risk Into Operational Control
WHITEPAPER