Comparison of PKI Spotlight, Microsoft Defender, and
Red Sift

Introduction

Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) is the backbone of secure communication, authentication, and encryption across enterprises. As organizations increasingly rely on PKI to secure their digital assets, ensuring continuous monitoring, detecting misconfigurations, and responding to vulnerabilities are critical. This blog compares three solutions—PKI Spotlight, Microsoft Defender, and Red Sift—focusing on their PKI-related monitoring capabilities, security integrations, and distinct functionalities.

Software Summaries and PKI Interaction

PKI Spotlight

Problem Space: PKI Spotlight is a dedicated PKI monitoring and observability solution designed to provide real-time insights into the health, security, and configuration of an organization’s PKI infrastructure.

PKI Interaction: PKI Spotlight offers deep monitoring capabilities, tracking certificate issuance, revocation, and expiration for PKI objects, including monitoring CRL expiration and endpoint accessibility status. It provides real-time event monitoring and integrates with SIEM solutions for security analytics. It excels in misconfiguration detection, vulnerability assessment, and monitoring PKI service availability. PKI Spotlight is not a Certificate Lifecycle Management tool and limits monitoring of issued certificates to those the PKI uses.

Microsoft Defender

Problem Space: Microsoft Defender is a broad security solution aimed at endpoint protection, identity security, and advanced threat detection. While it includes some certificate-based authentication and identity security capabilities, it is not designed as a dedicated PKI monitoring solution.

PKI Interaction: Microsoft Defender interacts with PKI primarily by protecting identity and detecting certificate-related threats in Active Directory. However, its capabilities are limited regarding real-time PKI health monitoring, certificate lifecycle visibility, and misconfiguration detection.

Red Sift

Problem Space: Red Sift provides domain security, email security, and certificate monitoring solutions focused on external attack surface management. Its goal is to help organizations manage TLS/SSL certificates and prevent downtime or security risks due to mismanagement.

PKI Interaction: Red Sift primarily focuses on external-facing certificates, monitoring their expiration, validity, and potential vulnerabilities. However, it lacks comprehensive visibility into internal PKI infrastructure, misconfigurations, and real-time PKI event monitoring.

Feature Comparison Matrix

Conclusion

For organizations needing deep PKI monitoring, PKI Spotlight is the only commercially available solution that provides real-time insights, misconfiguration alerts, and vulnerability detection across the entire PKI ecosystem. Microsoft Defender focuses on endpoint and identity security but lacks PKI-specific monitoring. Red Sift is helpful for external certificate tracking but does not provide internal PKI visibility.

Organizations that rely heavily on PKI should consider PKI Spotlight for full-stack PKI monitoring and risk mitigation, ensuring their cryptographic infrastructure remains secure, compliant, and resilient.