The digital certificate and public key infrastructure market (PKI) is a highly consolidated market with A&M ruling the roost. Small companies are being taken over by big companies. Digital Encryption of critical parameters such as signatures provides greater transparency and ease of use. Validation of signatures, permissions management, and receipts are effective across diverse application platforms. QoS is improving thanks to technology improvements and an enhanced application base which is likely to bring gains to the market during the forecast period.
Software solutions, gaining in strength and capitalizing on market gains remain as the largest market dominators in terms of market share. BFSI is the strongest and most awaited domain in the digital certificate and public key infrastructure market and is likely to remain the same in the forecast period. The digital certificates entail digital signatures drive without physical format thus enhancing the market in a digital certificate and public key infrastructure market.
Segmentation of digital certificates and public key infrastructure market by solution includes hardware and software. By deployment model, the market includes cloud-based and on-premise. By application, the market includes BFSI, Real state, Education and Research, healthcare and life sciences, human resources, legal, manufacturing, government, and defense.
By geography, the market includes North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, MEA, and Latin America. The market is flourishing and roadblocks exist with a lack of technical competence and lack of awareness in digital certificates and the public key infrastructure market. The timely implementation of digital certificates and the public key infrastructure market reduces paper workload and the cost of storage. Encryption is implemented with the help of mathematical keys to secure sensitive data.
With this 2-way authentication using keys at the sender and recipient ends, digital certificate and public key infrastructure signs off as a very secure digital-enabled cryptography recognizing standard or protocol called (public key infrastructure exchange) PKIX over the Internet. Concepts of PKI going on in tandem are SSL/TLS, HTTPS, IPsec, PGP/OpenPGP, and S/MIME.
KPI works on data authentication via keys-enabled data encryption software via special characters such as the hash (#) function depicting the mathematical relationship between public and private keys with knowledge of public keys in hands of people. The Certification Authority (CA) is the primary issuing authority for keeping data confidential in certificate management such as with Internet Service Providers (ISP) or an Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). PKI is a central repository for managing data.
The digital certificates in the PKI system are called X 509 certificates and bound by the knowledge of an email id or a domain name server (DNS). Confidentiality is guaranteed by its hierarchical structure and extension of the Hash function as a primary data validation key. HTTPS is the standard encryption method in e-commerce and banking applications and B2B commerce. The public key is less of a nuisance in private e-mail communications with both sender and receiver required to be a part of the process.
PKI market has a great contribution to securing data over the Internet from identity-barging and eavesdropping. PKI has proven to be one of the most reliable methods in secure data transmission but some impediments exist in the World Wide Web concerning procedural delays. Procedures have to be defined at the very start to completely secure data transmission. Four types of hierarchical models exist in the PKI infrastructure market. They are strict hierarchy, loose hierarchy, hub and spoke, and web of trust. CA must not have any loopholes which is a criterion for establishing the PKI model. Key industries in digital certificates and public key infrastructure market include Verisign, Inc., Comodo, GoDaddy Group, and Entrust Datacard Corp.
Research Support Specialist, USA