Customer Case Study: Greenhill
Greenhill is a global investment bank that relies on PKI to secure its financial transactions, client communications, and regulatory compliance.
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As Greenhill expanded its use of Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) to support secure digital operations, the organization faced increasing complexity in managing certificates, maintaining compliance, and ensuring operational resilience. The company identified several key challenges:
- Growing PKI complexity: The internal IT team managed daily operations but lacked deep PKI expertise for complex implementations and incident response.
- Operational risk: A PKI failure could disrupt mission-critical functions, leading to outages and regulatory penalties.
- Regulatory pressure: Greenhill needed to comply with strict security and privacy regulations, including GDPR, DORA, FCA, and OSFI guidelines.
PKI management became a priority as we expanded our use of digital certificates…The turning point was recognizing that we didn’t have the confidence to handle emergencies or complex implementations on our own. That’s when we knew we needed specialized help.
– John Shaffer, CIO & CISO
Solution Overview
Greenhill partnered with PKI Solutions to establish a proactive and resilient approach to PKI management. The company needed a solution that could provide real-time monitoring, automation, and expert support to prevent security risks and ensure compliance with evolving industry regulations. PKI Solutions deployed PKI Spotlight, enabling Greenhill to continuously monitor its PKI environment, detect vulnerabilities, and respond to issues before they could impact operations.
To strengthen Greenhill’s PKI posture, PKI Solutions conducted a comprehensive assessment of existing certificate management processes, identifying key areas for improvement. With PKI Spotlight, Greenhill gained centralized visibility into certificate statuses, expiration timelines, and system misconfigurations. Automated alerts and proactive risk detection eliminated manual oversight challenges, significantly reducing the likelihood of certificate-related outages.
Beyond technology, PKI Solutions provided ongoing expert guidance, ensuring that Greenhill’s IT team had the specialized knowledge needed to optimize PKI operations. This partnership allowed Greenhill to confidently scale its PKI usage, improve regulatory compliance, and enhance operational resilience without the need for additional in-house PKI specialists.
Key Deliverables
- Deployment of PKI Spotlight for real-time monitoring and security posture management.
- Comprehensive PKI health check to assess vulnerabilities and areas for improvement.
- Ongoing PKI advisory services to optimize performance and mitigate risks.
- Automation and risk reduction strategies to prevent operational disruptions.
Outcome
With PKI Solutions and PKI Spotlight, Greenhill transformed its PKI management approach:
- Reduced risk of certificate-related outages and security incidents.
- Improved operational efficiency with faster issue resolution.
- Strengthened regulatory compliance across multiple jurisdictions.
- Enhanced confidence in PKI security with expert support.
PKI Spotlight has been a game-changer for us in terms of monitoring and maintaining our PKI environment. It’s not just about catching problems early—though that’s been a huge benefit—it’s also about having confidence that everything is running smoothly.
– John Shaffer, CIO & CISO
Results
By partnering with PKI Solutions and implementing PKI Spotlight, Greenhill significantly improved the resilience and security of its PKI operations. The real-time monitoring and proactive risk detection allowed the IT team to identify and address PKI issues before they could cause disruptions. Previously, PKI-related incidents could take weeks or months to diagnose and resolve. With PKI Spotlight in place, Greenhill reduced that response time to mere hours, ensuring continuous protection of critical systems and sensitive financial communications.
Greenhill also gained greater visibility into its certificate environment, helping the team stay ahead of expiring certificates and misconfigurations that could otherwise lead to outages or compliance risks. This shift from manual oversight to an automated, intelligence-driven approach reduced the operational burden on IT staff, allowing them to focus on broader security initiatives rather than reactive troubleshooting.
Additionally, compliance with financial regulations became more streamlined, as PKI Spotlight provided insight into certificate health and security postures. With regulatory frameworks such as GDPR, DORA, FCA, and OSFI requiring strict controls over encryption and authentication, Greenhill was able to proactively manage its PKI environment with greater confidence, avoiding last-minute scrambles to meet audit requirements.
Reflecting on the experience, Greenhill’s CIO and CISO, John Shaffer, emphasized the value of expert guidance and proactive support. “If I could go back, I would have reached out to PKI Solutions sooner. We spent too much time struggling with another vendor who couldn’t meet our needs, and we could have avoided a lot of frustration by partnering with PKI Solutions from the start. I think we underestimated the complexity of PKI and the importance of having the right expertise on board from day one.”
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Get to Know PKI Spotlight!
Schedule a demo with our PKI experts to learn how PKI Spotlight addresses the most common challenges faced by our customers.
By the end of your call, you’ll have a clear understanding of how PKI Spotlight will improve your operational resilience, security posture, threat detection, and best-practice capabilities.
Topics we will cover:
- How the real-time aggregation engine works to process information from PKI roles such as CAs, CRL distribution points, Hardware Security Modules, and more.
- How to set up monitoring and alerting rules so that you, your teams, and stakeholders can get notified on changes, failures, and even pre-failure states.
- How to use config explorer to get insights into PKI configurations such as CA permissions, revocations, and crypto modules.
- How you can use time-based filtering to keep track of trends and establish behavioral baselines.
