What is insufficient scalability in a PKI?
A public key infrastructure (PKI) that fails to factor in the growth of the organization and its users will eventually need to be redesigned as the business scales, meaning lost productivity and customer impact. With new applications coming online daily and many users demanding access via multiple devices, good business planning requires that PKI scalability be considered from the outset.
Many organizations will need more than one certification authority (CA) to meet their growing requirements — certificates are used for logon authentication, digital document signing, email, and more. A root CA can act as the “master” with multiple subordinate CAs covering the various use cases. Alternatively, the organization can plan for scale by establishing multiple root CAs and multiple hierarchies. Regardless of the strategy, the goal is to get it right the first time to ensure an organization’s PKI can keep up with its growing needs.