Top use cases for private certificate authorities in public sector organizations
Public sector organizations face rising cybersecurity, compliance, and operational challenges, especially in complex hybrid environments. Private certificate authorities (CAs) offer enhanced control, automation, and security tailored to internal systems and Zero Trust frameworks. Unlike public CAs, private CAs allow agencies to manage internal identities, devices, and applications while meeting strict regulatory requirements. Key use cases include identity access control, device authentication, securing internal services, lifecycle automation, governance, and document/code signing. By deploying private or hybrid CA models, public sector organizations gain scalability, compliance assurance, and crypto agility.
Public sector organizations face unique IT challenges. These organizations offer many digital resources that serve the public good, but must go to extra lengths to safeguard sensitive information and maintain compliance with quickly evolving standards — all while dealing with significant budgetary limitations.
Increasingly, these requirements play out in hybrid environments, featuring a blend of traditional, on-premise systems and scalable, cloud-based solutions. These hybrid setups involve many moving parts that make them difficult to secure, but their public and private elements both remain important.
Public certificate authorities (CAs), for example, issue digital certificates to ensure seamless encryption and authentication for external-facing applications for public-facing websites or customer portals. These offer many advantages but lack internal customization. Private CAs complement public CAs by offering internal control over identity, authentication, and encryption, supporting critical initiatives like Zero Trust architectures, compliance mandates, and crypto agility. Public and private CAs can work together, allowing organizations to secure both external and internal resources while maintaining operational flexibility.
Transitioning to a private CA model may seem complex at first, especially in environments with evolving compliance needs. However, with the right strategy and tools in place, the benefits far outweigh the challenges. Private CAs offer greater control, enhanced security, and the agility needed to keep pace with today’s digital demands. To demonstrate the value of private PKI, we’ll explore several use cases that highlight how private CAs benefit public sector organizations.
Why private PKI is essential for the public sector
Public sector organizations increasingly rely on private PKI to overcome the limitations of traditional certificate management systems and better support hybrid operations. Offering internal control alongside improved compliance and even future-proofing via crypto agility, private CAs promise long-term security so that public sector organizations can confidently navigate rapidly evolving digital challenges. While public CAs still offer advantages for external platforms, they often fall short of meeting internal security and policy requirements, especially in complex environments. Public CAs are ideal for securing external services but often lack the flexibility needed to manage internal users, devices, and systems across complex environments.
Of course, not just any private CA will do. While legacy CA systems like Microsoft Active Directory Certificate Services (AD CS) once served an important function in earlier IT environments, they often lack the flexibility, scalability, and automation capabilities needed to support today’s dynamic hybrid infrastructures. They also require significant operational overhead and could even leave public sector organizations vulnerable to significant security gaps.
Modern private CAs deliver critical control, automation, and internal trust tailored to frameworks like Zero Trust, helping agencies maintain compliance while scaling securely across cloud and on-premises environments.
Comparing public and private CAs
Public and private CAs serve different purposes within the public sector. Both have value, but, upon clarifying their difference, it becomes abundantly clear that, given the current challenges within the public sector, organizations cannot afford to neglect the advantages of private CAs. Understanding where each fits into a security strategy is essential for creating a modern, efficient identity infrastructure. We've outlined key differences below:
Public CAs: As internet-facing solutions, public CAs facilitate global trust but offer limited customization and control over internal policies. Still, these can be useful for external-facing applications given their wide-scale trust and recognition.
Private CAs: Designed for internal use, private CAs promise improved control and policy flexibility, along with secure authentication for internal users, devices, and applications. However, they require careful management and lack the widespread trust associated with public CAs.
A third option warrants consideration: hybrid CA strategies, which incorporate the advantages of public and private CAs. This approach allows public sector organizations to efficiently secure both external-facing assets with public certificates and internal systems with private CAs tailored to specific operational needs. Hybrid strategies are increasingly favored, where there is a growing need for robust internal solutions alongside the global recognition offered by top public CAs.
Core use cases of Private CAs in the public sector
Many public sector organizations have adopted private CAs in hopes of addressing today's most significant security and compliance concerns, all while enjoying greater flexibility and even cost savings. Not sure what a private or hybrid CA might look like in the public sector? These use cases clarify the many purposes that private CAs serve:
Use case 1: user identity and access control
In an age of Zero Trust, authentication and identity verification take on an increased level of importance within overarching security frameworks. Certificate-based authentication strengthens security by enabling secure Single Sign-On (SSO), Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA), and Privileged Access Management (PAM) across government systems. These systems support Zero Trust, which is increasingly a priority for mitigating complex threats in a hybrid landscape. Certificate-based solutions easily integrate with identity and access management (IAM) platforms such as Active Directory (AD), Okta, and Ping Identity, helping to protect user identities across all environments.
Unified trust across departments
Centralized certificate management promotes secure collaboration between government agencies, offering a unified and highly secure solution for issuing and renewing digital certificates while also supporting strict compliance requirements. It also enables traceability and detailed access logging, providing the audit trails necessary to meet modern compliance mandates. Ultimately, this ensures safe communication channels and strong authentication, while also enhancing overall integrity by supporting non-repudiation.
Use case 2: device and IoT/OT authentication
From desktops to mobile devices and even Internet of Things (IoT) sensors, today's organizations must control and secure a wide array of endpoints. Issuing certificates for these endpoints validates their identities and establishes strong, encrypted connections to trusted networks. By issuing certificates for these endpoints, public-sector organizations can improve authentication while ensuring strong encryption between endpoints and servers. This is crucial for supporting Zero Trust in edge environments and enforcing strong security standards across operational environments where connected devices play critical roles.
Private CAs support the Automated Certificate Management Environment (ACME) protocol to automate certificate lifecycle management (CLM) along with Simple Certificate Enrollment Protocol (SCEP) for automated mobile PKI certificate enrollment. Also important: secure authentication protocols such as Extensible Authentication Protocol-Transport Layer Security (EAP-TLS) and the 802.1X authentication standard for port-based network access control (PNAC).
Scalable endpoint and IoT identity control
Given the sheer volume of devices upon which today's government agencies depend, it's easy to see why scalable certificate issuance is a priority: digital infrastructure continues to expand, and organizations need solutions that can support secure communication without compromising efficiency.
Private CAs allow for the seamless verification of machine identities across connected infrastructures to ensure that all devices are authenticated prior to gaining access to sensitive systems. These integrate with today's top mobile device management (MDM) and enterprise mobility management (EMM) solutions, such as Microsoft Intune, VMware Workspace ONE, Jamf, and SOTI to provide full device lifecycle control from enrollment through retirement.
Use case 3: securing internal applications and services
One of the main reasons public agencies adopt private CAs is to gain greater control over security solutions for databases, virtual private networks (VPNs), internal portals, application programming interfaces (APIs) and other internal systems. Private CAs enable SSL/TLS encryption across these assets to secure sensitive data flows and mitigate a wide array of internal threats, including increasingly sophisticated man-in-the-middle (MiTM) attacks. This also ensures that all traffic between hybrid and cloud-native apps remains trusted and encrypted.
DevOps integration for secure CI/CD
In the fast-paced world of DevOps, automation and orchestration tools such as Ansible, Terraform, or GitHub Actions automate workflows and provision infrastructure while optimizing everything from software installation to patch management. These solutions promote continuous integration (CI) and continuous delivery (CD) to allow for seamless implementation. Integrating private CAs into DevOps pipelines supports automation and security, allowing certificates to be issued, renewed, and revoked efficiently while maintaining deployment integrity as environments evolve.
Use case 4: certificate lifecycle management (CLM)
Manual certificate management is, simply put, inefficient. Hardworking IT teams simply cannot keep up with the ever-increasing volumes of certificates. This leads to expired certificates, service outages, and critical security gaps that expose systems to risk. Automated CLM solutions address these concerns by efficiently handling every phase of the certificate lifecycle: discovery, issuance, renewal, and revocation. By operating at scale, these systems not only improve uptime and reduce operational overhead, but also accelerate onboarding for new systems, devices, and applications.
PKI automation streamlines the certificate lifecycle while supporting Zero Trust solutions and driving efficient operations within public and private PKI environments. This also promotes full visibility via real-time monitoring, helping public organizations quickly detect and correct potential security or compliance weaknesses.
Use case 5: governance, risk, and compliance
Public sector organizations face considerable compliance challenges, including everything from the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) to the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) for safeguarding personal health information. These requirements have expanded to include newer mandates such as the European Union's NIS2 Directive, which places strict cybersecurity obligations on public sector entities. While compliance concerns are also relevant in the private sector, public organizations may face greater scrutiny. As such, transparency and accountability are top of mind.
Private CAs promote compliance with a wide range of regulations, including not only GDPR and HIPAA, but also, federal frameworks such as the Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA) and even security standards such as Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS).
Certificate-based access supports traceability and can prove useful for establishing audit trails. In addition to supporting secure audit trails, private CAs provide cryptographic key control, allowing public organizations to manage encryption keys internally and meet strict security policies. These controls provide a documented history of all actions involving sensitive data, thereby providing clear evidence of compliance with strict security standards.
Use case 6: code and document signing
Government agencies use digital certificates to safeguard both software and sensitive documents from tampering, ensuring authenticity and maintaining data integrity. Code signing verifies the authenticity of these files, using executable files known as code-signing certificates to protect agencies against malicious modifications. Document signing applies the same trusted principles to contracts, approvals, and internal records, confirming both the origin and integrity of sensitive documents.
Together, code and document signing strengthen the security of software and formal communications, helping public sector organizations maintain compliance and trust.
Deployment considerations: cloud vs. on-premise
Choosing to use a private or hybrid CA is only the beginning. Next, deployment challenges must be tackled. Cloud-based CAs offer scalability, lower total cost of ownership (TCO), and faster time-to-value, allowing public sector organizations to deploy secure solutions quickly without heavy upfront infrastructure investments. Increasingly, organizations favor these options because they simplify management while delivering flexibility and cost savings.
On-premises CAs can be useful for high-security applications or for safeguarding classified communications but will otherwise present significant limitations, such as scalability concerns and the high cost of infrastructure.
Hybrid deployments may strike the ideal balance between flexibility and control, giving agencies the ability to maintain critical services on-premises while leveraging the scalability of cloud-based systems.
When evaluating these options, consider current infrastructure, along with potential integration challenges. Be mindful of anticipated growth, as this will determine the need for scalable solutions.
Partnering with Sectigo to secure the public sector
Sectigo supports over 700,000 global customers with scalable PKI solutions, offering both private CA solutions and automated certificate lifecycle management to help public sector organizations simplify security operations. Our ability to unify public and private CAs through a single-pane-of-glass platform enables automation, policy enforcement, and scalability across complex IT environments.
With solutions like Sectigo Certificate Manager, agencies can automate certificate issuance, deployment, renewal, and revocation, helping to eliminate outages, reduce operational overhead, and maintain continuous compliance.
Take confidence in our strong track record involving public-facing organizations. For example, Sectigo helped the Netherlands' public works and water management agency Rijkswaterstaat automate certificate issuance and renewal processes, ultimately delivering significant cost savings while also preventing harmful outages.
Modernize your certificate infrastructure with Sectigo. Contact us today to discover how our scalable PKI solutions can help you strengthen compliance, reduce risk, and future-proof your public sector operations.