best practices

As cyberattacks continue to increase in frequency and impact, data encryption has become a critical component of modern cybersecurity strategies. The rise of remote work, cloud adoption and distributed networks has accelerated the shift toward Zero Trust architectures, where users, devices and systems must be continuously authenticated and authorized before accessing resources. Encryption is a core pillar of this approach, helping protect sensitive data even if systems are compromised. Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) enables this by providing trusted identities, secure key management and strong encryption for users, devices, applications and machine-to-machine communications. Despite its effectiveness, many organizations have historically viewed PKI as too complex or resource-intensive to deploy and manage. Cloud-based PKI-as-a-Service (PKIaaS) is changing that by allowing enterprises to outsource certificate management and cryptographic infrastructure while maintaining visibility and control. By simplifying deployment and scaling, PKIaaS makes comprehensive encryption more accessible and helps organizations reduce the impact and cost of data breaches while supporting modern Zero Trust security initiatives.

Enterprises are shifting from traditional, on‑premises PKI toward cloud-based PKI solutions as the need for scalable, flexible and cost‑efficient security grows. PKI remains essential for encrypting data, authenticating users and devices and preventing unauthorized access, but maintaining in‑house PKI is expensive, complex and resource‑intensive. Cloud PKI simplifies operations by centralizing certificate creation, management and distribution while eliminating infrastructure costs and enabling on‑demand scalability. Because cloud PKI systems are continuously updated, patched and audited, organizations benefit from strong compliance, improved cyber risk management and reduced maintenance burden. The model also supports workforce and customer flexibility through rapid certificate issuance and revocation. With predictable consumption‑based pricing and automation capabilities, cloud-based PKI strengthens security while controlling budgets. HID’s HydrantID PKIaaS enables fast deployment, automated certificate workflows and secure private PKI trust hierarchies for enterprise, IT and IoT environments.

Remote Online Notarization (RON) has become increasingly popular as organizations and individuals seek faster, paperless alternatives to traditional notarization. While RON improves convenience and efficiency, digital documents introduce new security challenges, including the risk of unauthorized modifications and difficulties verifying authenticity. Digital certificates address these challenges by enabling cryptographically secure digital signatures that verify a notary’s identity and provide evidence if a document has been altered after notarization. Digital certificates strengthen trust, improve productivity and support compliance across jurisdictions by binding a verified identity to every notarized document. They enable secure remote transactions, support legal and regulatory requirements, and work across a variety of notarization platforms and document applications. As remote notarization adoption continues to grow, digital certificates have become a critical component for ensuring document integrity, authentication and long‑term trust in digital workflows.

The rapid expansion of IoT has created an enormous security challenge, with billions of devices becoming potential entry points for attackers. PKI has emerged as a scalable and cost‑effective way to secure these devices by providing each endpoint with a unique, verifiable identity and enabling encrypted, passwordless authentication. PKI certificates protect data integrity, secure device communication, and support lifecycle management across diverse IoT environments. Because IoT manufacturing often occurs offline, modern PKIaaS solutions streamline certificate issuance through HSM‑based batch loading and support ongoing policy‑driven certificate renewal, monitoring and decommissioning. PKI hierarchies can also be customized for complex supply chains, allowing manufacturers to maintain separate trust anchors for different partners or product lines. As the number of connected devices continues to surge, cloud‑based PKI enables organizations to embed trusted identity into every device while reducing operational burden and ensuring long‑term scalability.

The White House Executive Order on Improving the Nation’s Cybersecurity highlights the growing importance of Zero Trust architectures as organizations face increasingly sophisticated cyber threats. Zero Trust operates on the principle that no user, device or system should be trusted automatically, requiring continuous authentication and verification for every transaction. Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) is a foundational technology for implementing Zero Trust because it provides trusted digital identities, certificate-based authentication, machine-to-machine encryption and passwordless access capabilities. As enterprises expand their use of Zero Trust, the number of digital certificates required to secure users, devices and systems continues to grow, creating operational and management challenges. Many organizations struggle with the complexity of issuing, managing and renewing large volumes of certificates, as well as a shortage of PKI expertise. Cloud-based PKI-as-a-Service (PKIaaS) addresses these challenges by outsourcing certificate lifecycle management while maintaining visibility and control. Hybrid PKIaaS architectures that combine cloud-based administration with highly secure storage of root keys provide scalable, resilient and trusted infrastructure for supporting modern Zero Trust security strategies.

As Zero Trust adoption accelerates and device fleets grow, enterprises now manage tens of thousands of digital certificates—each with a defined lifetime that must be renewed to maintain security. Manual certificate management is no longer feasible. Microsoft Autoenrollment, built into Active Directory, automates certificate enrollment, issuance, revocation and renewal across domain‑joined users, devices and applications. It simplifies PKI operations but still requires a Certificate Authority capable of securely issuing and updating certificates at scale. HID PKI-as-a-Service (PKIaaS) extends Autoenrollment capabilities into the cloud through its Autoenrollment Proxy (AEP), which connects Active Directory to HID’s cloud CA. This enables organizations to automate certificate lifecycle management across hybrid environments without deploying agents or reconfiguring individual devices. HID’s connector‑based automation model leverages standardized protocols and existing tooling, making PKI rollout simpler, scalable and aligned with Zero Trust requirements. With native automation, organizations can reduce manual workloads, avoid certificate‑related outages and modernize PKI without rebuilding infrastructure.