PKI Health Check

Why a PKI health check matters

Certificate-related outages disrupt critical services, and poorly governed PKI environments create security vulnerabilities and compliance exposure. Without regular assessment, organisations carry hidden risks: expired certificates, weak cryptographic standards, inadequate monitoring or insufficient documentation.

Most of those risks stay invisible until something breaks. In the estates we assess, the number of certificates found consistently exceeds the number the organisation had on record — and the ones nobody knows about are the ones that cause outages.

A health check provides assurance that your cryptographic foundation is fit for purpose and meets regulatory requirements. It highlights areas of concern before they become incidents, validates existing controls, and identifies where automation or process change would reduce effort.

The timing matters. Public TLS certificate lifetimes are falling to 47 days, taking renewal volume up roughly eightfold, and the post-quantum transition will require an inventory most organisations do not yet hold. For anyone planning digital transformation, adopting Zero Trust, or preparing for either of those changes, a health check establishes whether the foundation is ready.

What a PKI health check covers

Our health check identifies vulnerabilities, assesses operational efficiency and establishes whether your cryptographic environment aligns with security standards and business objectives. The analysis provides a clear path to improved resilience and compliance.

PKI underpins digital trust across your organisation, from authentication and encryption to code signing and secure communications. Yet many organisations have limited visibility into the health of that estate, leading to outages, compliance gaps and unmanaged risk.

We evaluate cryptographic infrastructure across governance, process, technology and operational maturity, identifying misconfigurations, assessing risk exposure and providing prioritised recommendations that support informed decision-making and investment.

Our approach is vendor-neutral and consultative. We assess against industry standards and your specific business requirements, delivering findings that strengthen security posture and reduce operational friction — not a platform recommendation dressed up as an assessment.

Our case studies show what this produces in practice, across engineering, healthcare and systems integrator environments.

How we deliver it

We deliver health checks in standard and lite formats, tailored to the scope and depth your organisation requires. Our team of over 20 PKI specialists brings extensive cybersecurity experience from government and enterprise environments, with many holding SC and DV clearance.

Current state analysis

We review your PKI setup, including certificate authority configuration, Active Directory Certificate Services implementation, Authority Information Access locations and certificate lifecycle management.

We assess CRL stores, delta CRL distribution, revocation mechanisms, backup processes and monitoring capability. In enterprise environments we verify Active Directory integration, evaluate smart card authentication configuration and review certificate templates. This establishes a baseline of how the environment actually operates, rather than how it was designed to.

The analysis contributes to a broader cryptographic inventory, documenting not just certificates but the algorithms, libraries and key material your systems depend on. A cryptographic bill of materials extends that into a maintained baseline as the environment changes.

Risk assessment and findings

Vulnerabilities, misconfigurations and process weaknesses are documented and categorised by risk level. We evaluate certificate validity periods, expiration tracking and protection of key material. Each finding includes context, potential impact and recommended mitigation, so you can prioritise remediation against risk appetite and available resources.

Governance and compliance review

We assess Certificate Policy, Certification Practice Statement and operational documentation for completeness, accuracy and adherence to compliance frameworks. We verify that documented procedures are actually implemented — the gap between the two is where audit findings usually originate.

Operational efficiency evaluation

Manual processes and performance issues are identified, with recommendations for automation, tooling or workflow change that reduce human error and improve service reliability. Where a platform change is warranted, our CLM vendor and licensing evaluation guide covers how we approach that comparison.

Strategic alignment

We evaluate how well your PKI supports your technology roadmap and security strategy, highlighting gaps or enhancements needed for cloud adoption, Zero Trust implementation or post-quantum readiness. Building crypto agility into the architecture is what turns the next cryptographic change into a managed programme rather than a rebuild.

Health check report

The final report is written for both technical and executive audiences. It includes detailed observations, prioritised actions and practical recommendations that inform remediation plans and investment cases.

What happens next

A health check is an assessment, not a commitment to anything further. Where remediation is needed we can support it — through consultancy, design and build, or managed operations — or hand the findings to your team to act on. Our obsolescence remediation case study shows how assessment findings translate into a delivery programme.

Talk to our team to discuss scope and timescales.