From Inventory to Control: Turning Cryptographic Visibility Into Action

As organizations prepare for post-quantum cryptography (PQC), one message is becoming clear: You can’t protect – or migrate – what you can’t see. But visibility is just the first step; as organizations shift from discovery to action, cryptographic posture management (CPM) is emerging as a critical discipline in post-quantum cryptography readiness.

Microsoft’s recent guidance rightly emphasizes the importance of building a comprehensive cryptographic inventory as the foundation for cryptographic posture management (CPM). And they’re right: Understanding where cryptography exists across your environment is critical.

So, how can organizations make the shift from cryptographic inventory to action?

Takeaways

• For cryptographic risk management at scale organizations need to not only know where cryptography exists but also have the ability to govern and act on it.
• Microsoft outlines a practical lifecycle to operationalize cryptographic lifecycle management –discover, normalize, assess, prioritize, remediate, and monitor continuously.
• Entrust works alongside Microsoft across its environments that organizations rely on as part of their cryptographic infrastructure, with capabilities that enable organizations to build a cryptographic inventory and function as essential inputs into a broader cryptographic posture management strategy.
• Organizations are increasingly adopting a platform-based approach to cryptographic posture management that connects discovery with governance and execution, allowing them to move from reactive management to proactive control.
• Factors driving the urgency of cryptographic posture management include shorter certificate lifetimes, the exponential growth of machine identities with the advent of agentic AI, rising regulatory expectations around cryptographic governance, and the need for organizations to update cryptography at an unprecedented scale and pace as part of the transition to post-quantum cryptography.
• Beyond building a cryptographic inventory, organizations can take the next step in building the foundation for true crypto-agility and post-quantum readiness across hybrid and Azure-based environments by combining the discovery capabilities of the Microsoft ecosystem with a platform approach to cryptographic control.

Cryptographic Inventory Is the Starting Point – Not the Finish Line

Across modern enterprises, cryptography is everywhere – embedded in applications, infrastructure, devices, and machine identities. It spans certificates, keys, secrets, protocols, and libraries, often managed by different teams using disconnected tools.

The result?

• Limited ownership and accountability
• Fragmented visibility across environments
• Manual processes that don’t scale
• Growing operational risk – especially as certificate lifetimes shrink and environments become more dynamic

In this context, building a cryptographic inventory is necessary – but insufficient.

Without the ability to govern, prioritize, and act, inventory risks becoming just another dataset – valuable in theory but difficult to operationalize in practice.

From Visibility to Control

To truly manage cryptographic risk, organizations need to move beyond inventory toward centralized control and policy-driven execution.

This means shifting from a static view of cryptographic assets to a dynamic, operational model that enables teams to:

• Continuously discover and normalize cryptographic assets across code, networks, runtime, and storage
• Define and enforce policy (e.g., approved algorithms, key lengths, certificate lifetimes, compliance requirements)
• Prioritize risk – based on real-world exposure and business impact
• Automate remediation and lifecycle management across keys, certificates, and secrets

In other words, it’s not just about knowing what you have – it’s about being able to act on it, consistently and at scale.

This is where cryptographic posture management evolves from a concept into a capability.

Operationalizing Cryptographic Posture Management

Microsoft outlines a practical lifecycle for CPM – discover, normalize, assess, prioritize, remediate, and monitor continuously. This lifecycle is essential and operationalizing it across a complex enterprise requires more than individual tools or point-in-time processes.

It requires a coordinated approach that brings together:

• Visibility across all cryptographic assets – not just certificates but keys, secrets, protocols, and embedded cryptography in code
• Clear ownership and governance models that span security, infrastructure, and development teams
• Policy-driven automation to reduce manual effort and minimize the risk of outages or misconfigurations
• Resilience strategies, such as multi-CA support, to ensure continuity in the face of outages or policy changes

Without these elements, even well-intentioned CPM efforts can struggle to scale.

The Role of the Microsoft Security Ecosystem

Microsoft provides a powerful foundation for cryptographic discovery and signal generation across the enterprise.

For decades, organizations have relied on Microsoft platforms – spanning Active Directory Certificate Services (AD CS), Azure Key Vault, SQL Server, Intune, Purview, and cloud-native security tools – as core components of their cryptographic infrastructure. Entrust has worked alongside Microsoft across these environments, integrating hardware security modules (HSMs) to protect PKI private keys, enabling bring-your-own-key (BYOK) models in Azure Key Vault, centralizing key management for database encryption with SQL Server, providing keys and digital certificates for Intune, supporting Double Key Encryption (DKE) for Purview, and extending trust into modern identity ecosystems, including participation in the Microsoft Intelligent Security Association (MISA).

Capabilities include:

• Code scanning for cryptographic usage
• Endpoint and runtime visibility into certificates and libraries
• Network-level insights into encrypted traffic and protocols
• Centralized storage and management through services like Azure Key Vault

Together, these signals enable organizations to begin building a meaningful cryptographic inventory and are essential inputs into a broader CPM strategy.

But as organizations move from discovery to decision-making and execution, many find they need additional capabilities to unify, govern, and act on those insights across hybrid, multi-cloud, and multi-vendor environments.

Bringing It Together: A Platform Approach to Cryptographic Control

To bridge this gap, organizations are increasingly adopting a platform approach – one that connects discovery with governance and execution.

This approach enables:

• Enterprise-wide visibility and control across all cryptographic assets
• Centralized policy enforcement to ensure consistency and compliance
• End-to-end lifecycle management for keys, certificates, and secrets
• Integration with hardware roots of trust, such as HSMs, to strengthen security at the foundation
• Automation at scale, reducing operational burden while improving reliability

By unifying these capabilities, organizations can move from reactive management to proactive control – turning cryptographic posture into a continuously managed discipline rather than a periodic exercise.

Why Cryptographic Posture Management Matters Now: Preparing for What’s Next

The urgency behind CPM is only increasing, for several reasons:

• Shorter certificate lifetimes are putting pressure on manual processes.
• Machine identities are growing exponentially with the advent of agentic AI.
• Regulatory expectations around cryptographic governance are rising.
• The transition to post-quantum cryptography will require organizations to update cryptography at a scale and pace never seen before.

In this environment, inventory provides the “what,” but crypto-agility – the ability to adapt quickly and safely – depends on having the operational foundation to act.

A Practical Path Forward

For organizations getting started, a practical approach doesn’t require starting from scratch. Organizations can:

1. Leverage existing tools – including Microsoft Security and Azure capabilities – to begin collecting cryptographic signals across code, endpoints, networks, and storage
2. Establish ownership and governance to ensure accountability across teams
3. Define policy baselines aligned to security standards and compliance requirements
4. Centralize and normalize inventory data into a unified view
5. Prioritize risk and begin automating remediation workflows
6. Adopt a platform approach to scale visibility, control, and automation across the enterprise

What We’re Seeing Across Organizations

Across industries, a consistent pattern is emerging: Cryptography has become a critical operational dependency, but without the governance to match. Many organizations have partial visibility into certificates and keys, yet ownership remains fragmented across PKI, cloud, and infrastructure teams. Traditional Microsoft AD CS environments continue to support critical services, while evolving requirements are driving greater focus on audit readiness, scalability, and cloud integration.

What’s driving action isn’t theory – it’s friction. Certificate-related outages, audit pressure, and cloud transformation initiatives (including moves to Azure and modernization of AD CS) are exposing the limits of manual processes. At the same time, post-quantum readiness is forcing organizations to question whether their current cryptographic foundations can adapt.

In practice, organizations are moving beyond inventory toward centralized visibility, policy-driven control, and automation. For example, one regulated enterprise modernized its AD CS-based PKI while maintaining Microsoft integrations – automating certificate lifecycle management and improving audit readiness. Another global organization operating across Azure environments introduced centralized key governance using the Entrust Cryptographic Security Platform to reduce fragmentation and support compliant operations at scale.

The takeaway is consistent: Visibility without control is insufficient. Organizations don’t just need to know where cryptography exists – they need the ability to govern and act on it.

From Complexity to Confidence

Cryptographic posture management is an ongoing discipline and is critical to cybersecurity and business continuity. As environments evolve and new risks emerge, organizations need more than visibility. They need the ability to govern, adapt, and respond – quickly and confidently.

Building a cryptographic inventory is the essential first step but turning that inventory into action is what ultimately reduces risk. By combining the discovery capabilities of the Microsoft ecosystem with a platform approach to cryptographic control, organizations can move beyond visibility and build the foundation for true crypto-agility and post-quantum readiness across hybrid and Azure-based environments.