best practices

PKI and digital certificates underpin secure communication across modern networks, enabling authentication, encryption and data integrity for users, devices and applications. This blog explains the foundational concepts behind PKI, starting with public key cryptography, which uses paired public and private keys to encrypt and decrypt information. PKI builds on this by defining the policies, technologies and processes needed to issue, manage and validate digital certificates through trusted Certificate Authorities (CAs). These certificates bind identities to public keys and are used across applications such as secure email, eCommerce and online banking. The article also clarifies key PKI terminology, including Certificate Authorities, digital certificates, qualified certificates, advanced electronic signatures and qualified electronic signatures under eIDAS. It outlines industry bodies like the CA/Browser Forum, and certificate types such as EV certificates, wildcard certificates and SAN certificates—each serving different identity assurance and domain coverage needs. With PKI’s growing role in securing digital ecosystems, organizations must understand these components to ensure strong, scalable and compliant security practices.

Digital certificates are becoming more difficult to manage as two major trends accelerate: certificate lifespans are getting significantly shorter, and the number of IoT devices requiring certificates is exploding. Some applications now require certificates as short-lived as 30 days, creating enormous operational pressure on IT teams already responsible for managing thousands of certificates across expanding device fleets. Expired certificates pose serious risks—including outages, security gaps and reputational damage—yet most organizations still rely on manual processes and spreadsheets that cannot scale. To keep pace, organizations need automated certificate lifecycle management. A centralized certificate management platform streamlines enrollment, renewal, revocation and monitoring across both public and private certificates. HID’s HydrantID Account Certificate Manager (ACM) helps eliminate manual tracking and reduces human error by automating certificate issuance through standards-based protocols like ACMEv2, SCEP, EST and Microsoft auto-enrollment. With a single portal for visibility and control, enterprises can support rapid IoT growth, maintain security and avoid costly certificate‑related outages.

TLS/SSL certificates are essential for securing communications between browsers and web servers, protecting sensitive information through encryption and identity verification. These certificates use public and private key cryptography to establish trusted, encrypted connections and come in varying assurance levels, including Domain Validation (DV), Organization Validation (OV) and Extended Validation (EV). While DV certificates only verify domain ownership, OV and EV certificates provide higher levels of organizational identity validation, making them more suitable for business and customer-facing applications. As certificate lifespans continue to shorten, managing renewals and maintaining compliance has become increasingly challenging for enterprises. Organizations must not only select the appropriate certificate type based on their security and business requirements, but also implement certificate lifecycle management processes to automate issuance, renewal and monitoring. Effective certificate management helps reduce operational overhead, prevent outages caused by expired certificates and maintain trust across websites and digital services.

FIDO2 is an open authentication standard designed to provide secure, phishing‑resistant and passwordless access to online services. Built on WebAuthn and the Client-to-Authenticator Protocol (CTAP), FIDO2 uses public‑key cryptography to authenticate users through security keys, smart cards or mobile devices. Its simplicity, low deployment cost and strong protection against credential theft have driven rapid adoption among enterprises looking to strengthen authentication while improving user experience. While FIDO2 and PKI both rely on asymmetric cryptography, they serve different but complementary purposes. FIDO2 focuses on user authentication and passwordless access, whereas PKI provides a broader framework for identity management, encryption, digital signatures and secure communications. Organizations increasingly deploy FIDO2 as a lightweight authentication layer alongside existing PKI infrastructure, using FIDO2 for secure logins and PKI for protecting applications, devices, documents and machine-to-machine communications. Together, these technologies help reduce phishing risk, strengthen identity assurance and support modern Zero Trust security strategies.

Business Email Compromise (BEC) has evolved into one of the most sophisticated and costly forms of phishing, exploiting social engineering rather than technical flaws. Attackers impersonate vendors, executives or trusted service providers to redirect payments, steal credentials or gain unauthorized access. These scams impact organizations of all sizes, with recent cases involving global banks, manufacturing subsidiaries and even small community institutions. With tens of thousands of reported incidents every year and growing complexity, traditional user awareness and email hygiene are no longer sufficient defenses. To close this security gap, organizations can strengthen identity assurance by adopting PKI-based controls. HID IdenTrust TrustID certificates provide cryptographically validated digital identities for employees, enabling secure email signing, encrypted communications and authenticated access to applications and VPNs. By ensuring that emails and access requests originate from verified identities, PKI significantly reduces the risk of impersonation-driven fraud and limits the success of BEC schemes that rely on spoofing and stolen credentials.

FIDO2 is rapidly becoming a cornerstone of modern authentication strategies as organizations work to strengthen identity assurance in increasingly complex, cloud‑hybrid environments. Traditional password-based authentication remains a persistent security liability, introducing friction for users and operational burden for IT teams. FIDO2 eliminates this dependency by enabling phishing‑resistant, passwordless authentication grounded in strong public‑key cryptography. Growing adoption is driven by several factors: the ability to remove passwords entirely, improved user experience and privacy, flexible authenticator form factors, and broad support through WebAuthn’s standardization across major browsers. Momentum accelerated further when Microsoft announced FIDO2 passwordless support for hybrid Active Directory environments, enabling seamless sign‑in to both on‑prem and cloud resources and reducing reliance on legacy authentication paths. HID Global’s partnership with Microsoft strengthens this ecosystem by offering Crescendo smart cards and security keys that support FIDO2 while also enabling digital signing, encryption, and even physical access. These authenticators integrate with Azure AD and on‑prem infrastructure, providing a unified identity experience and optional centralized lifecycle management through HID Credential Management Service. Organizations should begin evaluating where password‑based workflows remain entrenched, assess readiness for hybrid FIDO2 deployments, and determine how stronger, standardized authentication can simplify user experience while advancing Zero Trust initiatives. Early adoption sets the stage for a more secure, scalable, and passwordless future.