Most PKI Deployments Are Out of Compliance: Will Yours Pass an Audit?

Think your PKI implementation is bulletproof? Think again. On the receiving end of this technology is Public Key Infrastructure (PKI), which enables digital trust in everything from encrypted emails and VPN access to cloud workloads and IoT devices. But here’s the uncomfortable reality: most PKI implementations fail audit because operational governance doesn’t keep pace with certificate sprawl, key sprawl, and hybrid complexity.

Organizations routinely discover expired certificates, unmanaged keys, inconsistent issuance and revocation policies, and siloed teams running PKI independently. Even large enterprises with mature security stacks struggle to maintain audit-ready PKI because manual processes simply do not scale.

A bad PKI audit is more than a tick-box issue. It can pause businesses, result in regulatory fines, and expose sensitive data. That’s why organizations are moving toward the best PKI solutions and cloud PKI solutions featuring automation, lifecycle management, and cloud-native scalability, because passing audits now requires continuous control, not annual cleanups.

Why PKI Compliance Has Become Harder (Even for Mature Enterprises)

PKI compliance has changed. It used to be about having a CA, issuing certificates, and proving encryption was enabled. Today, auditors and security frameworks increasingly evaluate whether PKI is:

• governed by consistent policy

• monitored continuously

• resilient against certificate outages

• protected against key compromise

• centrally visible across cloud and on-prem

• capable of proving controls with audit trails and reports

In hybrid environments, certificates exist everywhere: web servers, APIs, load balancers, Kubernetes clusters, service meshes, email systems, VPN gateways, endpoints, IoT devices, and internal machine-to-machine traffic.

PKI becomes non-compliant not because cryptography fails, but because governance fails.

So Many PKI Compliance Failures

Even the best PKI solutions can run afoul of compliance checks due to:

• Certificates no one is checking
  

• Outdated or poorly managed certificates that no one monitors
  

• Keys are left to proliferate across teams, and without central oversight
  

• Issue, reissue, or revoke policies without following a uniform policy
  

• Siloed architectures where PKI is managed by different groups/teams separately
  

Bottom line: If your system lacks central management, no matter how powerful it is, the deployment isn’t compliant.

What Auditors Commonly Look For in a PKI Audit

In practical terms, many audits come down to a few core questions. Can your organization prove:

1) Certificate Inventory Completeness

Do you have a complete inventory across cloud, on-prem, and hybrid systems, or only what one team owns?

2) Certificate Lifecycle Governance

Can you prove certificates are provisioned, renewed, rotated, and revoked according to a defined policy?

3) Key Protection and Control

Where are private keys stored? Who can access them? Are they protected by strong controls and separation of duties?

4) Policy Standardization

Are key lengths, cryptographic algorithms, validity periods, and issuance rules consistent, or different across teams?

5) Audit Trails and Evidence

Can you produce reports showing issuance, renewal, revocation, and administrative actions, without manual log hunting?

6) Machine Identity and Automation Readiness

Are IoT, APIs, containers, and service identities managed under PKI governance, or treated as exceptions?

Many organizations fail audits not because they lack PKI, but because they cannot produce evidence that PKI is being controlled consistently.

How Cloud PKI Services Solve Compliance Problems

Cloud PKI changes the compliance game by shifting PKI governance from scattered infrastructure to centralized, policy-driven control.

Cloud PKI offerings bring the management of PKI to a new level:

• Unified view of all certificates and keys in the enterprise with centralized visibility over both on-premises and cloud environments
  

• Automated lifecycle management, such as creation, rotation, and revocation
  

• Key length, algorithms, and expiry date enforcing policy
  

• Audit-compliant logging for internal and external audits
  

Cloud-native PKI reduces manual dependency and makes it easier to prevent missed renewals, inconsistent issuance, and untracked certificates. It also helps enterprises scale faster without increasing compliance overhead.

Most importantly: cloud PKI transforms PKI from “something IT manages” to “something the enterprise governs continuously.”

What to Consider When Buying a PKI Solution

When selecting the best PKI solution, evaluate whether it supports compliance by design, not by effort.

When deciding what the best PKI solution is, ensure that it includes:

• Complete automation of certificate life cycle management
  

• Integrations with cloud platforms, APIs, and DevOps processes
  

• Role-based access control and policy enforcement
  

• Machine Identity Management for the IoT, APIs, and Containers
  

• Real-time reporting and audit trails
  

A well-managed PKI is more than encryption; it is reliable governance.

The Risks of Non-Compliant PKI

Failure of PKI to be non-compliant creates business risk that extends far beyond the security team:

• Regulatory fines in the financial, healthcare, or public sector
  

• Outages due to operations failing from out-of-date or poorly tracked certificates
  

• Higher security risk of keys or certificates being compromised while being left unattended
  

• Reputation costs in the event of a breach caused by bad PKI governance
  

Non-compliance is not an option. It’s a business necessity.

How eMudhra Can Help Enterprises Comply with PKI

eMudhra supports enterprises that need operationally mature, audit-ready PKI through the best PKI solutions and cloud PKI solutions built for visibility, automation, and governance.

eMudhra helps enterprises strengthen PKI compliance with:

• emCA: Certificate management centralized in the cloud or on-prem
  A CA foundation that enables issuing and managing certificates across enterprise identity types with centralized control.

• Centralized dashboards: Full visibility across certificates, keys, and machine identities
  Helping security and infrastructure teams eliminate blind spots across hybrid deployments.

• Ready-to-audit reports: Simplify internal and regulatory auditing with easy reporting
  Giving audit teams the evidence needed for compliance validation without manual compilation.

This approach helps enterprises reduce operational risk, improve compliance readiness, and maintain continuity of trust across rapidly changing IT environments.

Conclusion

The majority of PKI deployments are technically healthy yet cannot pass compliance audits because they lack governance, automation, and visibility. Transitioning to the best PKI solutions and cloud PKI solutions helps companies to:

• Maintain continuous compliance

• Automate certificate lifecycle management

• Reduce operational risks

• Securely scale in the cloud or hybrid environments

eMudhra ensures your PKI implementation is compliance-ready, secure, and controllable, so your enterprise can focus on growth instead of fearing audit failures and certificate-driven disruption.