How to Pick the Best PKI Solution Provider for Compliance

Learn How to Choose the Right PKI Solution Provider by Evaluating Trusted PKI Vendors

With more than 27 billion IoT devices already in use globally, securing device communication and user identities is the need of the hour. Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) secures and authenticates data shared online by managing encryption keys and issuing digital certificates.

But running PKI in-house can be difficult. It takes skilled people, round-the-clock oversight, and the ability to manage certificates reliably at scale. This makes a PKI solution provider inevitable.

The right PKI solution provider simplifies the process without compromising trust or compliance. This blog will take you through when, why, and how to choose the best PKI provider for your business needs.

Why Every Organization Needs a PKI Solution Provider

In-house PKI solutions are difficult for organizations to manage at a larger scale due to a number of critical reasons. This requires them to rely on third-party PKI service providers. Some of the common challenges that organizations face in managing PKI services in-house are as follows:

• Limited resources and expertise: The lack of availability of in-house resources for managing the PKI leads to security gaps and configuration errors. Approximately 55% of IT professionals have identified a lack of adequate resources as a key challenge in PKI adoption.
• Lack of automation and manual lifecycle: The lifecycle management of digital certificates requires renewal, issuance, and revocation manually. The unexpected expiry of PKI certificates may lead to reputational damage and system outrages.
• Scalability and complexity: The growth of digital certificates with digital expansion of organizations requires them to manage encrypted and authenticated of multiple devices. Hence, scaling PKI across IoT, cloud environments, and agile workflows is complex.
• Audit and compliance: The on-premise PKI deployed within the organization may not be able to meet the compliance and security standards. This impacts organizations in implementing best practices such as policies and governance in accordance with regulatory standards set by GDPR, HIPAA, PCI DSS, GLBA, CMMC, FIPS 140-2.

By outsourcing the PKI to third-party providers with the use of PKIaaS (PKI-as-a-Service), businesses can save resources, time and money. PKIaaS offers better security and scalability at a lower cost than the on-premises PKI infrastructure. It provides a wide range of certificates like TLS/SSL, code signing, and S/MIME, that give businesses the choice to select a certificate that is best suited to their business needs.

When Should You Choose a PKI Provider?

Certain business shifts signal that it’s time to hand off PKI responsibilities to a specialized provider. These moments often appear during growth, infrastructure changes, or increased regulatory pressure and in-house setups begin to fall short.

Your business is expanding across regions or departments. More people, systems, and sites mean more certificates to issue, track, and renew, often with different policy needs.

You’re deploying more connected devices. IoT environments and machine identities multiply certificate volume and complexity quickly, making manual handling unsustainable.

Compliance requirements are getting stricter. External partners or regulators may now demand audit-ready PKI infrastructure, encryption standards, or reporting your current system can’t support.

You’re short on time, tools, or expertise. If you’re relying on spreadsheets to manage certificate lifecycles or firefighting expirations, that’s a signal you’ve outgrown in-house PKI.

You’re preparing for shorter certificate validity cycles. With the industry shift toward 47-day SSL certificates, manual renewal won’t scale. Thus, automated, policy-based management becomes essential.

You’ve experienced a security or service disruption. If a certificate expired without warning or a system failed due to misconfigured keys, it’s a sign that reactive PKI is no longer enough.

When one or more of these signs appear, it’s a strong indication that your organization needs a PKI provider like SSL2BUY who can offer scale, automation, and the technical alignment.

What Are the Key Factors to Evaluate in a PKI Provider?

Choosing a PKI provider is more than just ticking off technical features. Find a solution that fits your infrastructure, adapts to growth, and meet the standards that regulators and auditors expect. Here’s what to look for:

1. Security & Encryption Standards

   While evaluating PKI providers, organizations need to consider post-quantum cryptography (PQC). It allows PKI providers to prioritize and evaluate updates that are important to prevent quantum-powered cyber threats. This is crucial for identifying the encryption dependency, certificates, and cryptographic libraries across systems. Some of the hybrid PKIs support RSA/ECC apart from the PQC algorithm. It works seamlessly for issuing certificates that are compatible with PQC and legacy-compliant devices.

2. Compliance Readiness

   While considering PKI providers it is important to ensure that the PKI comprises built-in templates for HIPAA, GDPR, and FIPS. They speed up the overall process of security compliance and increase security to avoid fines. Apart from that the policy templates should be able to support detailed reporting of audit trials for better customer retention.

3. Automation & CLM (Certificate Lifecycle Management)

   PKI provider should comprise efficient and ready-to-consume certificate lifecycle management (CLM) that can manage and automate machine identities and digital certificates.  CLM solutions in PKI offers better discovery of certificates for real-time supervision. It also offers deployment, distribution, multi-channel notifications and automation of certificate lifecycle.

4. Deployment Flexibility (On-Prem, Cloud, Hybrid)

   The PKI should be easily discoverable across hybrid and multi-cloud infrastructures to reduce the risks of rogue, unmanaged certificates that are non-compliant. PKIaaS (PKI-as-a-Service) is a better alternative to the on-premises PKI as it offers a streamlined operation of PKI, enhanced security, and higher efficiency at a comparatively lower ownership cost.

5. Scalability & Integration

   In selecting the trusted PKI vendors, it is an important area of consideration that the PKI can support dynamic cloud environments through digital certificates and can support operational integrity across all scales. PKI should also allow enterprises to manage the security of devices with ease and allow integration of various cloud providers such as AWS IoT, Microsoft Azure, and Google IoT.

6. High Availability and Disaster Recovery

   The PKI should have an infrastructure that has high availability with a “hot” backup system. This means it can seamlessly continue without interruption providing zero downtime or better disaster recovery.

7. Governance, Policy Ownership, and Support

   PKI policy owner should have better decision-making of the certificates that are issued. It is essential to ensure that the keys of CA (Certificate Authority) are being protected and the certificate holders are able to meet necessary obligations. The PKI vendor should be able to provide customizable policies that are in compliance to the requirements of organizations. PKI vendors need to provide SLAs and 24/7 technical assistance for better customer satisfaction and reduced turn-around time.

8. Total Cost of Ownership

   Cost is one of the important parameters when choosing a PKI provider. One approach of evaluating cost is by comparing capital expenditures (CAPEX) with subscription-based services categorized under operational expenditures (OPEX). In contrast to the CAPEX, where the company uses funds for acquiring fixed assets, the OPEX is a subscription-based service that delivers services across defined subscription terms along with value co-creation. Modern trusted PKI vendors offer automation and dynamic scalability that can be expanded to multiple devices without overburdening resources.  They conduct regular compliance audits which report areas concerning compliance and risk monitoring, operations, architecture design and governance.

Why Choose SSL2BUY PKI Solutions for Compliance?

At SSL2BUY, we help organizations implement Public Key Infrastructure in a way that fits their environment—whether it’s private, cloud-based, or a hybrid approach. Our focus is on meeting real compliance needs with practical, scalable configurations.

We work directly with providers like DigiCert, GlobalSign, Sectigo, and Venafi to deliver PKI solutions that support frameworks such as GDPR, HIPAA, and FIPS. From certificate issuance to encryption and identity validation, our goal is to make setup and automation straightforward—without adding unnecessary costs.

How SSL2BUY adds real value to your PKI implementation:

• Compliance-Ready
• Deployment Flexibility
• Direct OEM Partnerships
• Built-In Risk Controls
• CLM & Automation Support
• Ongoing Optimization
• Enterprise-Grade Support
• No Hidden Costs

Conclusion

Implementing PKI offers organizations all-around security solutions for operational efficiency and enhanced data security. The centralized cryptographic key management simplifies the organization’s management approach and scalability ensures the measures can be adapted to the overall growth of the organization.