Governance Overview
PKI-as-a-Service governance defines who makes PKI decisions, who operates each component, and how changes are approved. Encryption Consulting (EC) operates the hosted service, while the customer approves how its certificates are used within its environment. The policies that put this governance into practice are described in the pages of this section: the Security Overview, Certificate Policy, Certificate Practice Statement, Key Management Policy, Access Control Policy, Certificate Policy for Subscribers, Incident Response, and Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery.
- Shared responsibilities: EC manages the hosted CAs, HSM infrastructure, certificate publication, and service monitoring. The customer manages its DNS, trust stores, internal enrollment systems, applications, and certificate owners. The service agreement records the detailed responsibility split. See Shared Responsibility Model.
- Policy ownership: EC and the customer agree on certificate policies during design. The customer approves permitted use cases, identity checks, validity periods, algorithms, templates, and revocation requirements before they are put into production.
- Access and approvals: Named personnel receive access according to their roles. Sensitive CA and key management activities follow the approved authorization, separation of duties, and key ceremony procedures.
- Change control: Changes to the CA hierarchy, templates, enrollment methods, CDP/AIA locations, or cryptographic settings are assessed for their effect on existing certificates and applications. The responsible parties approve, test, and record each change before release.
- Oversight and review: EC provides the operational records and reporting defined in the agreement. EC and the customer review service health, certificate risks, incidents, upcoming CA or CRL expirations, and planned changes at agreed intervals.
- Incident and exit decisions: The incident plan identifies contacts, escalation paths, and decision makers for events such as a CA outage or suspected key compromise. The agreement also defines how certificates, records, and cryptographic assets will be handled if the service ends. See Termination and Exit.