PKI Insights Recap - Overcoming HSM Challenges with Visibility

In our March PKI Insights webinar, we tackled one of the most overlooked risks in PKI environments: the lack of visibility into hardware security modules (HSMs).

While HSMs are essential for secure key storage and compliance, they’re often deployed and forgotten—rarely monitored, rarely maintained, and frequently misunderstood. This “black box” treatment can lead to unexpected outages, failed high-availability setups, or worse misconfigurations that go undetected until it’s too late.

We explored how visibility gaps leave organizations vulnerable, especially in hybrid cloud setups where complexity is already high. Without knowing if a CA can reach its HSM, or if firmware is outdated, teams are operating in the dark. And when something breaks, it’s often already impacted systems and services downstream.

The good news? You don’t have to log into your HSMs to monitor them. PKI Spotlight delivers real-time visibility—without credentials—so you can detect issues early and prevent outages before they happen.

Takeaway:

If your HSMs haven’t been touched in years—or if you’re not sure what state they’re in—it’s time to bring them into the light. Don’t let a false sense of security allow your PKI to be compromised.