12 May 2020

HID Global, a worldwide provider of trusted identity solutions, and Keyfactor, a provider of secure digital identity management solutions, announced a collaboration that will improve how organisations secure data and protect privacy. By adding HID IdenTrust digital certificates to the Keyfactor platform, the offering provides enterprise customers with a single convenient solution to meet today’s zero-trust security models and identity.

Digital certificates are used as a foundational security layer within IT and PKI frameworks. Transport Layer Security (TLS)/Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) certificates establish an encrypted connection between a browser or user’s computer and a server or website to ensure data security, privacy and authenticity.

Unprotected enrollment servers

HID’s IdenTrust business offers the only bank-grade identity authentication system in the world

Rising cyber risk has prompted further adoption of digital certificates as businesses work to strengthen their overall security posture and prevent downtime due to system misconfiguration or certificate exploit.

“Misconfigured systems, unprotected enrollment servers such as Simple Certificate Enrollment Protocol (SCEP), or other weaknesses can be exploited by hackers or rogue users to obtain fraudulent certificates that enable system access or “imposter” certificates that represent other users with elevated access,” said Chris Hickman, Chief Security Officer at Keyfactor.

Identity authentication system

“Finding rogue user or device certificates and preventing administrator impersonation can only be achieved by gathering and inspecting every internal and external certificate within the organisation’s PKI.”

HID’s IdenTrust business offers the only bank-grade identity authentication system in the world, delivering a legally and technologically interoperable environment for authenticating and using identities in more than 175 countries. With a range of application specific identity-based digital certificate solutions and over 5.1 million certificates in active production reliably supporting 18 billion validations per year, IdenTrust is one of the world’s leading digital certification authority.

Access Management Solutions

The Keyfactor platform provides the visibility and control to efficiently track, renew, replace and manage certificates

To manage the HID IdenTrust certificates, Keyfactor offers the most complete and scalable cloud-based platform for the enterprise. The Keyfactor platform provides the visibility and control to efficiently track, renew, replace and manage certificates across the enterprise through one easy to use interface. Certificate management can now be automated to avoid inconvenient and costly down-time due to expired certificates while reducing the associated compliance risks.

“Today’s zero-trust environment highlights the need for securing and managing identities of users, machines and devices on a network,” noted Brad Jarvis, Vice President and Managing Director of the Identity & Access Management Solutions (IAMS) with HID Global.

Digital identity management

"The combination of HID IdenTrust digital certificates and the Keyfactor platform enables our enterprise customers to achieve frictionless management and deployment of digital certificates. Customers can use this combined solution to achieve greater control of their information security assets along with effective risk management.”

“This solution delivers end-to-end, secure certificate management that empowers business leaders to manage the operational and security risks that growing digital identity adoption presents,” said Kevin von Keyserling, Chief Strategy Officer & Co-founder at Keyfactor. “HID Global and Keyfactor share a common vision to support customers as they implement and scale digital identity management across the enterprise. This solution brings that vision to life, meeting our customer’s PKI needs today, and as they scale.”