In financial services, trust is more than a buzzword. Trust is the invisible infrastructure that supports everything from microlending and remittance to SWIFT transactions between multinational banks. But as digital ecosystems multiply and compliance mandates tighten, trust must evolve from a passive promise into a strategic, scalable foundation.
Today’s security leaders are grappling with that evolution…in real time.
Whether you’re enabling instant transactions, onboarding fintech partners, or integrating post-M&A systems, your ability to move fast depends on an often-overlooked layer: the public key infrastructure (PKI) that underpins digital trust.
This blog explores how the largest financial institutions are treating trust as a launchpad (not a liability!) and why doing so requires visibility, control, and post-quantum readiness at scale.
The Infrastructure of Trust is Cracking
Trust used to be simple: protect the network, authenticate the user, encrypt the channel. Today, trust is expected to be:
- Continuous (available 24/7/365)
- Ubiquitous (in every API, cloud, app, and transaction)
- Provable (to auditors, regulators, and boards)
But legacy PKI systems weren’t built for this scale or scrutiny. They’re fragmented across cloud silos, tangled in manual processes, and vulnerable to one very human weakness: negligence, and its symptom, expiration.
In January 2024, the UK’s CHAPS real-time settlement system halted due to a single expired TLS certificate, disrupting high-value payments across one of the world’s most vital financial markets. A month later, it happened again. Microsoft 365 suffered a similar fate in June — taking down collaboration systems used across the industry.
These weren’t exotic zero-days. They were avoidable failures in trust governance.
From the outside, it looks like bad luck. But security leaders know better: these incidents reflect deeper issues in visibility, ownership, and resilience.
Why Trust Fails
Every digital service depends on trust. But behind the scenes, many financial institutions rely on:
- Siloed certificate management across DevOps, app teams, and cloud units
- Outdated tools bolted onto decades-old CA hierarchies
- Manual renewals that can’t scale with the speed of cloud-native development
In short, the tools that built trust yesterday can’t sustain it tomorrow.
Meanwhile, FinServ innovation is accelerating:
- Instant payments and real-time settling
- AI-assisted fraud detection and identity verification
- M&A consolidation and platform convergence
- Cloud-first initiatives with zero-trust architectures
- High-throughput applications demanded by customers
Each of these introduces new cryptographic dependencies. But most teams are still managing trust like it’s 2008.
From Band-Aids to Business Resilience
So how are leaders turning trust into a launchpad? Let’s look at what real institutions are doing.
🏦 M&T Bank: Scaling Trust Across Hybrid Environments
M&T Bank needed to unify cryptographic governance across both legacy infrastructure and modern platforms after a major technology transformation. With Keyfactor, they gained:
- Centralized visibility over all digital certificates
- Automated lifecycle management across cloud and on-prem
- Improved resilience against service outages from expired or misconfigured certs
Trust became a strategic enabler for secure DevOps and API modernization. This case study shows how Keyfactor has become a critical component in M&T’s security infrastructure.
💸 EQ Bank: Powering Fintech Innovation with PKI
EQ Bank, one of Canada’s most digitally advanced banks, adopted a cloud-native trust infrastructure to support its rapid innovation cycles. They needed scalable certificate issuance to support everything from mTLS between microservices to digital onboarding.
With a flexible, CA-agnostic approach, EQ Bank achieved:
- Crypto-agility with support for hybrid classical + PQC certs
- Self-service automation for development teams
- Proactive controls to prevent outages and reduce support costs
For EQ, PKI was part of the product delivery engine. This case study demonstrates that, since running with Keyfactor Command, EQ Bank has not experienced a single certificate-related outage.
The Power of Interoperability
So how do these organizations avoid the “rip and replace” trap?
They use interoperable, CA-agnostic PKI solutions that:
- Work across legacy and modern environments
- Support multiple certificate authorities, public or private
- Integrate with cloud platforms, DevOps pipelines, and security tools
- Enable visibility and control from a single pane of glass
This flexibility is crucial, especially during M&A events or platform transitions. It allows institutions to modernize without breaking what works today.
The Shift from Trust to Trust Management
The biggest change? Forward-thinking banks are no longer treating PKI as background infrastructure. They’re putting it under governance — just like capital reserves, vendor risk, or insider threat controls.
It’s been argued that trust without governance is no trust at all. A patchwork of tools is not enough. Indeed, from the The Security Leader’s Digital Trust Playbook: Financial Services Edition:
“You can’t deliver digital trust at scale without treating PKI as critical infrastructure. It must be governed, observed, automated, and built for change.”
And increasingly, it must also be ready for post-quantum threats.
The Coming Cryptographic Shift
NIST’s selection of post-quantum algorithms has kicked off a global transformation. Financial institutions are expected to:
- Inventory where quantum-vulnerable algorithms are in use (RSA, ECC)
- Prepare systems for hybrid certificates (classical + PQC)
- Demonstrate crypto-agility to regulators before 2030
The real deadline isn’t when quantum computers arrive – it’s when regulators start asking if you’re ready. So what can you do now?
- Get a full inventory of your certificates and keys across all environments
- Establish ownership and lifecycle policy across teams and toolchains
- Adopt crypto-agility principles that allow you to swap algorithms easily
- Integrate PKI into your business strategy — not just your IT stack
With the right foundation, trust becomes a strategic advantage, one that accelerates transformation.
Next Steps: Visibility & PQC-Readiness
In Part 2 of this series, we’ll walk through a hypothetical quantum breach scenario, examine what crypto-agility really requires, and share a simple checklist to start your post-quantum readiness journey. (Spoiler: It’s not just about new algorithms…it’s about visibility, governance, and proving that your infrastructure is built for the next frontier…so stay tuned for part 2 in this new blog series!)
📥 Want the full roadmap now?
Curious what preparation looks like? Download The Security Leader’s Digital Trust Playbook: Financial Services Edition today. Have questions for our security team? Reach out here with any questions — we’re here to help!
