Data confidentiality has taken a major leap forward. Now more than ever, it’s important for your organization to protect data from accidental, unlawful, or unauthorized access, disclosure, or theft. Of course, there’s no better way to do this than with a well-managed Public Key Infrastructure (PKI).
PKI has been around for decades, but its role has grown way beyond the basics. Today, it’s a cornerstone of modern security. But PKI alone isn’t enough.
To truly secure your data, you need to align it with compliance standards to minimize risks and dodge legal headaches, especially in large organizations. Ensuring your PKI systems tick all the regulatory boxes is just as crucial as implementing them in the first place.
That’s where enterprise PKI comes into play. It combines PKI security with compliance frameworks to ensure your organization stays both safe and on the right side of the law. In this article, we’ll break down how enterprise PKI supports regulatory compliance, the key frameworks you need to know, and the best practices to keep you on track.
Security Matters: Improving Privacy With Enterprise PKI
PKI is the foundation for secure communication, especially when it comes to Transport Layer Security (TLS). While TLS does the heavy lifting of encrypting channels between devices, PKI empowers teams to deploy TLS securely across the organization.
PKI is responsible for issuing and managing the certificates used to establish these secure TLS connections. In simple terms, PKI is the backbone that makes an organization’s website communication and TLS work effectively.
Moreover, data privacy laws are no joke. They require organizations to put strong physical, technical, and administrative controls in place to protect data. Trying to manage all these controls manually or with disconnected tools is not just slow…it’s overwhelming and error prone.
But this process becomes automated with enterprise PKI solutions like Keyfactor’s EJBCA. Let’s break down some PKI features that make compliance a breeze:
- Detailed audit logs: Records every signed transaction in detail to keep everything transparent and accountable. So, if anyone asks for the “who, what, when, and where,” you’ve got it covered.
- Role-based authorization: You can control who can access, issue, or manage certificates. This ties into compliance regulations like HIPAA’s principle of least privilege to ensure only the right people have the right access.
- Certificate lifecycle management: Enterprise PKI solutions automate the whole certificate lifecycle—from issuance to revocation. This ensures your system is always up to date with regulations like GDPR and eIDAS.
- Secure management protocols (ACME, SCEP, CMP, etc.): Supports secure protocols like ACME and SCEP, which are crucial for automating certificate management and keeping you compliant.
- PQC readiness: Enterprise PKI solutions can prepare your systems for quantum-safe encryption to help you stay ahead of the curve and in line with the NIST cybersecurity framework.
Maintaining IAM Compliance
Identity and Access Management (IAM) is your organization’s first line of defense. It controls who can access what and ensures the right people get the right resources. It handles the crucial tasks of authentication and authorization, but without the solid cryptography that comes with enterprise PKI, IAM solutions can only go so far.
With digital certificates and encryption, enterprise PKI solutions provide strong authentication mechanisms that make it nearly impossible for unauthorized users to sneak in.
Helping Secure Devices
The rise of IoT devices has massively expanded the attack surface for cyber threats. These devices are essential but often lack built-in security, which leaves them vulnerable to hacking, data breaches, and other risks.
To tackle this, lawmakers and regulators created standards and legislation to protect these devices and ensure the security of critical systems.
Some of those standards include IEC 62443, which sets the bar for securing industrial automation and control systems. We also have the Cyber Resilience Act and NIS2, which lay out mandatory security practices for devices, networks, and systems.
You can use an enterprise PKI solution like EJBCA to effortlessly handle these compliance standards. It has in-built features that enable secure authentication, encryption, and digital signatures. These are all vital for maintaining trust between devices and ensuring regulatory adherence.
Enterprise PKI builds trust through digital certificates. These certificates authenticate the identity of devices to ensure that only trusted, verified components can connect to your Operational Technology (OT) environment. With an enterprise PKI, you get a strong authentication layer that blocks malicious actors from slipping rogue devices into your network.
Boosting Cloud Security
As businesses shift more critical operations to the cloud, security and compliance concerns have skyrocketed. To help protect data and keep businesses accountable, regulators have introduced a slew of standards and regulations: HIPAA, HITECH, PCI/DSS, SOC Type II, FIPS, NIST, ISO, and FedRAMP. These efforts are designed to guard sensitive data against unauthorized access and breaches.
An enterprise PKI solution like EJBCA helps you meet these requirements quickly and accurately.
It secures your data both in transit and at rest through encryption, a vital feature for businesses using the cloud. It also works with cutting-edge encryption algorithms to ensure that sensitive data stays safe from prying eyes and tampering.
But an enterprise PKI does more than encryption. It strengthens overall cloud security through centralized management. It allows you to manage and rotate encryption keys and certificates easily. This is a huge advantage, since regularly updating and validating certificates is crucial for ongoing compliance.
Contributing to Standardization and Interoperability
As businesses increasingly rely on multiple technology providers, enterprise PKI solutions step in to ensure that different systems can work together smoothly by creating a unified and efficient security infrastructure.
Enterprise PKI drives standardization by offering a universal framework for secure communication. At its core, it uses widely accepted standards like X.509 certificates for identity verification and encryption. This ensures that systems across different platforms can easily understand and process the same formats.
This means you don’t have to stress about proprietary solutions that only play nice with specific vendors or software. With enterprise PKI, everything is designed to work together to keep your security seamless and adaptable as your business grows.
Your Next Steps
Implementing enterprise PKI isn’t just a nice-to-have – it’s a must for staying ahead in today’s regulatory landscape. Whether you’re securing communication channels, managing access, protecting devices, or safeguarding data in the cloud, an enterprise PKI solution ensures you’re not only ticking the compliance boxes but doing so in the most efficient and automated way possible. For example, Keyfactor’s EJBCA Enterprise is PQC-ready, deploys fast, runs anywhere, and scales on-demand to meet your needs.
Ready to dive deeper?
- Explore EJBCA Enterprise: Check out EJBCA Enterprise to experience how PKI can be tailored to specific requirements.
- Learn how other companies handle PKI: Watch our on-demand sessions from Keyfactor Tech Days to see how enterprise teams are modernizing their PKI.
