GAO: Beware managed PKI

The Government Accountability Office warned this month that in some situations, managed public key infrastructure services could be more trouble than they're worth to government agencies.

In a letter to Rep. Tom Davis (R-Va.), chairman of the House Committee on Government Reform, GAO's Chief Technologist Keith Rhodes said several agencies had looked to GAO for informal advice on managed PKI services. GAO's position was that agencies might face a greater burden in using managed services, specifically contract certification authorities, than they would if they implemented the technology themselves.

In a PKI deployment, the certification authority issues and manages the digital certificates that authenticate users and systems in a PKI environment.