New Year, Same Old Risks
As the new year begins, the question on everyone’s mind is: What can we expect from it? When it comes to our digital world—particularly cybersecurity—this question carries a heightened sense of urgency. We are witnessing unprecedented changes that impact us both positively and negatively.
There is no point in hoping for a slowdown in cyber threats or a decline in attack volumes. And accelerating technological developments such as Artificial Intelligence and Quantum Computing will add new dynamics to this development.
Of course, no one knows exactly what the future is going to bring but there are specific trends that can help us to enable robust cybersecurity strategies for 2025 and beyond.
The Top Trends in Key Management
Based on various sources, such as market research, analyst reports, conversations with industry experts and our customers, we have identified crucial trends that will have influence on the crypto key management landscape. In this blog post we will share the top three with you.
Trend No 1: Continuous Challenges in Cloud Key Management
Considering the fact that utilizing the cloud became the norm for almost every organization, it might sound strange that there are still so many complications out there related to the secure management of cloud keys. However, upon closer examination of cloud setups, the struggles are consequential.
Most cloud environments are realized as heterogenous setups consisting of a mixture of private and public cloud offerings. This leads to a complex landscape of utilization and storage points for the corresponding cloud keys, making it extremely difficult to keep control over them.
Along with cloud diversification, we see a rise in the amount and increased complexity in data protection, compliance, data privacy as well as data sovereignty compliance requirements.
Consequently, organization will experience an increasing urge to find ways to manage their cloud keys centrally, ideally within their own digital infrastructure and isolated from the cloud environments.
Trend No 2: Management of PQC-Ready Keys
After Post-Quantum Cryptography (PQC) was the dominating topic throughout the last decade in the cyber industry, this topic is now also increasingly adopted throughout all industries on the user side. Organizations around the globe are setting up plans how to secure their digital infrastructure against threats caused by Quantum Computing.
The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has already released a list of cryptographic algorithms that are rated as quantum-resistant, making their use the clear recommendation when encrypting data. Vendors are now widely starting to plan for the adoption of these algorithms in their solutions, e.g. Hardware Security Modules (HSMs). But as encryption and management of the encryption keys are inseparable, quantum-secure encryption also requests the efficient handling of the PQC keys.
Hence, the management of those keys and protecting them against loss, manipulation or misuse is going to be one of the biggest and most pressing topics around key management within the next 12 months.
Trend No 3: Unification and Centralization Requirements for Key Management Solutions
Beyond cloud and PQC aspects, organizations experience a diversification in their digital infrastructure in general, for example, through the use of different hard- and software-based data storage solutions, various authentication systems, and a myriad of other data protection solutions.
With that, the necessity for multi-vendor and multi-use case capable key management is becoming inevitable to gain and keep central control while maintaining visibility, cost, and management efficiency. Centralized key management on-premises, behind the firewall continues to be of paramount importance as organizations expand off-premises to the cloud.
Throughout 2025 we expect to see organizations widely adopting mechanisms to (re-)centralize and unify their traditional enterprise key inventory. This poses a challenge to key management vendors to integrate capabilities across all environments seamlessly and compatibly as possible while delivering the highest standards for security and transparency.
Implementing the Right Key Management Solution to be Ready for 2025 and beyond
The requirements for crypto key management will only continue to grow, and the need for key management systems that provide more and more sophistication while reducing the effort to manage those keys increases.
Choosing the right key management solution can sometimes be an exhaustive process in today’s complex enterprise computing environment! However, it is a vital activity to perform thoroughly in order to minimize risk to your organization, to your customers and to your brand!
Discover the most critical factors for Key Management System Migration: Watch Our Webinar.
Discover Enterprise Secure Key Manager – The Better Choice for Managing your Crypto Key Through a Single Pane of Glass
Utimaco’s Enterprise Secure Key Manager (ESKM) is the single pane of glass, providing you central access and management of all your keys; may it be on-premises or in the cloud.
Based on its crypto-agile approach and its wide interoperability capabilities, it is also ready to manage PQC-keys and can easily be integrated into your digital environment – either as hardware or virtual appliance.
