Thales has published the results of its third annual 2017 PKI Global Trends Report. The report, based on independent research by the Ponemon Institute and sponsored by Thales, reveals the Internet of Things (IoT) is playing an increasingly important role in influencing public key infrastructure (PKI) planning and usage. PKIs, widely used for authentication, digital signing, and encryption, are considered a core service supporting many different use cases and applications.
While a majority (54 percent) of respondents believe cloud-based services is the most important trend driving the deployment of applications using PKI, 40 percent also cited the IoT – a number that has doubled in the past three years. The findings, which reflect the responses of over 1,500 IT security practitioners worldwide, paint a picture of technological evolution and some uncertainty, but also opportunity:
· In the next 2 years, almost half (43%) of IoT devices will use digital certificates for authentication
· 43% of respondents believe PKI deployments supporting the IoT will be a combination of cloud-based and enterprise-based PKIs – a number that reflects the scale of the IoT and resulting scale of PKIs issuing certificates for it
· Over one-third of respondents (36%) cite new applications like the IoT as the fastest growing area of PKI evolution (a number that has almost tripled since 2015)
· On average, PKIs support more than 8 different applications within a business; SSL tops the list, followed by VPNs, public cloud apps, and device authentication
· Almost two-thirds of organizations now report having a PKI and 36% of respondents use hardware security modules (HSMs) to protect their PKI
