The Importance of PKI Today

Public Key Infrastructure around the world has had mixed success over the past ten years. Some jurisdictions (like Australia and the USA) have been left largely disillusioned by the hype, while others (like China and Korea) see PKI as indispensable infrastructure for e-business. The typical situation around Asia is that PKI is highly desirable but difficult and/ or costly to implement. Regulators tend to be especially confused about their proper role; government PKI licensing programs in places like Singapore, Hong Kong SAR and Australia are not in high demand. This paper presents an update on the PKI business internationally, with a special focus on the role of governments. The paper presents a fresh new "plain speaking" description of the business benefits of PKI, in order to inform government policy reform. Please note that this paper assumes that the reader is somewhat familiar with PKI concepts. This is not a paper for PKI beginners.