SK ID Scales with Confidence: Zero Incidents and 20M Certificates Migrated with Keyfactor EJBCA

Founded in 2001, SK ID is an Estonian provider of international e-identity and digital signing products, including Smart-ID, Mobile-ID, timestamping, and certification solutions. The company serves over 1,000 government and private-sector customers and over 4 million end users in 20 countries. It employs roughly 90 people and has annual revenues of €17 million.

Sometimes, life forces your hand. SK ID — a provider of identity solutions — leveraged Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) to deliver digital identity solutions, digital signatures, and qualified time stamp solutions to customers and end users in over twenty countries. But as their legacy PKI platform reached its end of life, the company sought a new vendor who could scale to match the rapid growth in demand for its services.

“We didn’t have a choice but to switch,” says SK ID’s Head of Trust Services, Mihkel Tammsalu. He believes that SK ID was reaching the limits of what they could do, and their roadmap would eventually require them to move to another solution.

SK ID stands out from hundreds of EU competitors through its interoperable cross-border services. These offerings drive growth beyond the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, creating business opportunities in countries such as Iceland and industries like the consumer loan market. The previous platform hindered the company’s ability to scale internationally and build faster and more convenient PKI services.

“The previous solution met most of our technical needs,” continues Tammsalu. However, it couldn’t easily scale to accommodate new services, and it hindered SK ID’s ability to roll out innovative products and services as they expanded into new markets.

Another issue was standardization. SK ID’s previous PKI platform required the Windows Server operating system, while everything else ran on Linux. The company wanted to reduce complexity and eliminate the administrative burden of managing two operating systems.

As SK ID issued an RFP to find the right solution, their primary considerations were a pricing model that reflected its business practices, a platform with an easy migration path for existing processes and millions of customer certificates, and a vendor with a long-term vision to ensure a lasting partnership.

After reducing the applicants to three finalists and requesting demos, SK ID chose Keyfactor EJBCA as its new PKI management platform. Keyfactor’s long-term vision and commitment to post-quantum security stood out as critical differentiators. In addition, Keyfactor’s pricing model aligned closely with the company’s business strategy, allowing SK ID to pursue its growth without incurring unexpected or excessive expenses. Keyfactor also provided technical support during the migration process, proving themselves a knowledgeable partner with the expertise to get the most out of the purchase.

The migration to Keyfactor was quick and painless. Within a week, SK ID began integrating the new PKI solution into its technology stack. As a bonus, Tammsalu discovered the Keyfactor open-source community, learned how other companies used Keyfactor EJBCA, and leveraged his peers’ wisdom to optimize SK ID’s platform implementation.

To help drive enablement, Keyfactor provided training to SK ID employees. The EJBCA interface and platform were so logical and intuitive that the company’s experienced PPI engineers quickly became familiar with the new solution.

To maximize their success, Tammsalu worked alongside Keyfactor’s Professional Services team to assess SK ID’s technical needs and validate the company’s deployment strategy. This partnership resulted in the painless migration of 20 million certificates and four core business services: national ID cards, organizational certificates, Mobile-ID, and Smart-ID.

Today, Keyfactor EJBCA is helping SK ID scale rapidly. The company is building new services faster and more efficiently to meet its business needs and expand in the European Union and worldwide. SK ID has also experienced zero PKI platform incidents, preventing service disruptions and data integrity issues that could damage its reputation.

“We had no incidents in the 18 months since we rolled out Keyfactor EJBCA,” explains Tammsalu. “It has been incredibly stable and is helping maintain our reputation as a Quality Trust Service Provider.” It’s one thing to have EU certification, but showing customers and partners zero disruptions since adopting Keyfactor massively boosts credibility.

Keyfactor’s Linux-based PKI management platform and user-friendly interface have reduced complexity, eliminating the need to maintain two operating systems, consolidating obsolete legacy systems into a unified modern platform, and freeing SK ID to support new strategic initiatives and digital identity solutions in Europe and beyond.

SK ID has made tremendous improvements with Keyfactor EJBCA, standardizing their operating system and streamlining PKI management. The company is more efficient, building new services faster, and scaling to fulfill their business needs while safeguarding users’ personal data.