PKI market expected to reach US$3.7 billion by 2027

The Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) market is entering a new phase of technological evolution focused on service-based delivery, increased automation, and high modularity. ABI Research, a global technology firm, is seeing growing maturity in the PKI-as-a-Service (PKIaas) market due to demand by enterprises for more flexible, cloud-based offerings that are better aligned with their digital transformation.

“Self-service models, such as PKIaaS and Certificate Lifecycle Management-as-a-Service (CLMaaS), are the next evolution of managed PKI services, based on the intent of providers to reach a much wider audience, and to “democratize” the use of digital trust technologies, in a more streamlined, malleable, and simplified way,” says Michela Menting, Senior Research Director at ABI Research. “PKIaaS abstracts all of those on-premises assets to the provider’s own cloud resources. It’s about giving back control of PKI functions to the end user while the provider manages the complexity of the backend infrastructure. By offering a wide range of features that can be subscribed to (and canceled) at will, the PKIaaS model provides more flexibility in usage and management.”

Over the 2023-2027 forecast period, the PKI market will grow at a steady 9% CAGR. Within that, the PKIaaS submarket CAGR will be much more dynamic, at 30%. ABI Research expects it to hit half a billion by 2027. The space is increasingly competitive, with traditional stakeholders in the Certificate Authority (CA), PKI, and Hardware Security Module (HSM) space, such as DigiCert, Entrust, GlobalSign, Keyfactor, Sectigo, Thales, and Utimaco, in coopetition with cloud service providers including Google, AWS, and Microsoft.

“Key to success in the PKIaaS market is how well these providers can cater not only to how enterprises are digitally transforming but also to the new applications they are seeking to implement that require flexible service models, including DevSecOps, code signing, IoT root of trust injection, machine identity and authentication, among others,” Menting concludes. ABI Research