Operational Technology (OT) environments are undergoing a rapid transformation as industrial systems become increasingly connected to enterprise networks, cloud platforms, and Industrial IoT ecosystems. This increased connectivity enables new capabilities such as predictive maintenance, remote operation, and data-driven optimization. At the same time, it significantly expands the cyberattack surface of industrial systems.
A fundamental requirement for securing connected industrial environments is the ability to establish trusted machine identities for devices, applications, and services. Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) provides the cryptographic foundation for these identities by issuing digital certificates that enable authentication, encrypted communication, and data integrity. Certificates allow industrial systems to verify the identity of communication partners before exchanging sensitive operational data.
However, implementing PKI in OT environments introduces unique opera tional challenges. Industrial deployments often include large and hetero geneous device fleets, long equipment lifecycles, limited connectivity, and strict availability requirements. Traditional manual certificate management processes cannot scale to such environments. As a result, automated certificate lifecycle management has become a critical component of modern OT security architectures. Automation mechanisms enable organizations to provision, renew, and revoke certificates at scale while maintaining consistent security policies across distributed systems.
This technical white paper explores:
Published 17/04 2026
