Challenges of implementing public key infrastructure in Netcentric enterprises

The explosive growth of e‐commerce has resulted in organizations sharing data over the Internet with other Netcentric organizations. Advances in telecommunications and networked applications are forcing dramatic changes in corporate functions, such as supply chain management, enterprise resource planning and customer relationship management. Online transactions with business partners and customers has prompted e‐businesses to re‐evaluate their security strategy, to avoid network downtime and being unable to connect to upstream partners and suppliers. Presence of a robust security architecture is essential to the success of netcentric organizations. Public key infrastructure (PKI) is one such technology that may offer benefits to Netcentric organizations, being a system of services, technology, protocols and standards that can be used as a solution for providing secure transactions. There are many factors that make PKI implementation difficult. This paper provides an overview of PKI technology, insight into challenges, as well as impact of implementing PKI in Netcentric organizations.