It often starts with something small. An application that suddenly becomes unavailable. An API integration that fails without a clear reason. Or a production system that grinds to a halt on Monday morning — not because of an attack, but because of an expired certificate. What once seemed like a minor operational detail suddenly turns into a business-critical risk.

For many years, Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) played a quiet, supporting role in IT and security environments. Certificates were issued manually, tracked in spreadsheets, and only noticed when something went wrong. That era is over. Modern organizations operate hybrid cloud environments, embrace Zero Trust, automate everything that moves, and see the number of machine identities grow exponentially. In this reality, PKI is no longer a prerequisite — it is a strategic pillar of digital trust.

At the same time, expectations are rising. Certificate lifecycles are becoming shorter, regulatory pressure is increasing, cryptographic agility is gaining importance, and organizations are clearly maturing in their cybersecurity approach. More and more, this leads to the same conclusion: relying on ad-hoc certificate management is no longer sustainable. PKI must be deliberately designed, governed, and operated — often supported by managed services.

In this blog, we explore six key drivers explaining why PKI is shifting from a technical utility to a strategic component of modern cybersecurity architectures.

Do you want to know more about Public Key Infrastructure? Read our resource: What is PKI?

The six drivers behind the growing demand for managed PKI

1. Digital sovereignty and control over trust

Digital sovereignty has become a top priority for both public and private organizations. The question is no longer just where data is stored, but who controls the cryptographic keys, certificates, and trust models that enable digital interactions.

Dependence on public certificate authorities or fragmented PKI implementations increasingly conflicts with the need for control over the digital value chain. By bringing PKI under their own governance — whether operated internally or as a managed service — organizations retain control over policies, key material, lifecycles, and compliance. PKI thus becomes an instrument of strategic autonomy rather than a purely technical capability.

2. Zero Trust requires scalable, identity-driven trust

Zero Trust is not a product, but an architectural principle. And at its core lies one fundamental question: who or what do you trust, under which conditions, and for how long?

Certificates provide the foundation for strong, machine-readable identity in Zero Trust architectures — for users, workloads, devices, and services alike. Mutual TLS, workload identity, and service-to-service authentication cannot be implemented at scale without PKI. As Zero Trust adoption matures, so does the need for a robust, automated, and centrally governed PKI layer.

3. Compliance and regulation make PKI explicit

Where PKI used to be implicit, it is now explicitly addressed by regulation. Laws and frameworks focused on digital resilience, operational continuity, and data protection increasingly impose concrete requirements on cryptographic controls, key rotation, logging, and auditability.

For many organizations, this means that ad-hoc or manual certificate management is no longer defensible. Managed PKI helps embed policy enforcement, lifecycle management, and auditability by design — turning compliance into something demonstrable rather than assumed.

4. The explosive growth of machine identities

The fastest-growing class of identities within organizations is no longer human. APIs, microservices, containers, IoT devices, CI/CD pipelines, and cloud workloads continuously communicate with each other — each requiring its own digital identity.

These machine identities are short-lived, dynamic, and numerous. Traditional PKI models, originally designed for a limited number of servers and users, simply do not scale to this reality. Without automation, organizations face certificate sprawl, loss of visibility, and increased risk. Managed PKI enables this growth to be handled securely and in a controlled manner.

5. Operational risk and business continuity

Many organizations have already learned that an expired certificate can be just as disruptive as a security incident. Applications go offline, customer portals become unavailable, and critical processes come to a halt — often without an immediately obvious root cause.

These incidents are rarely the result of technical complexity alone, but of limited visibility and manual processes. Shorter certificate lifecycles further amplify this risk. The business case for managed PKI becomes clear: fewer human errors, predictable renewals, higher availability, and measurable risk reduction.

6. Increasing security maturity within organizations

Perhaps the most important driver of all: organizations are maturing in their cybersecurity approach. Where PKI was once handled “on the side” by infrastructure or operations teams, there is growing recognition that trust, identity, and cryptography are foundational elements of the security architecture.

With that maturity comes the realization that PKI is not a side topic, but a core capability. As a result, more organizations deliberately bring PKI under their own control — supported by managed services — to ensure alignment with architectural principles, risk management, and long-term strategy.

Conclusion: PKI as a strategic foundation for digital trust

The renewed focus on PKI is not a hype cycle, but a logical consequence of how digital environments are evolving. Zero Trust architectures, cloud-native platforms, regulatory pressure, and the explosive growth of machine identities all make trust explicit — and therefore make PKI strategic.

Organizations that continue to treat PKI as an operational afterthought risk turning trust into their weakest link. Organizations that position PKI as a strategic pillar, on the other hand, establish a scalable foundation for digital trust, resilience, and future readiness.

The growing demand for managed PKI shows that more and more organizations are making that choice deliberately.

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