DB Systel, the IT arm of Deutsche Bahn, is procuring a standardized public key infrastructure platform to issue and manage digital certificates across the German rail group’s companies. The subsidiary already supplies PKI services to all of Deutsche Bahn’s group companies through its portfolio and intends to keep doing so, and it is now seeking a single software solution to underpin that service group-wide.
The procurement is built around automation and standardization. DB Systel is looking for a PKI software solution for uniform use across the group, drawing on modern, automated, and as far as possible standardized technologies to provision certificates, the credentials that authenticate machines, services, and users across an enterprise network. A common platform is intended to replace ad hoc approaches with a consistent way of issuing and renewing certificates across the group’s companies.
The operating model keeps the system in Deutsche Bahn’s own hands. The supplier is to provide the software as a solution that DB Systel operates itself, running it entirely within one of the group’s own cloud environments, either Amazon Web Services or Microsoft Azure. In this arrangement, what the supplier provides is the software licenses and the associated software packages or appliances, leased to DB Systel rather than run as an external managed service.
The tender reflects the wider enterprise push to manage certificates as a controlled, automated asset class. Vendors have been consolidating those capabilities, as with Entrust’s PKI Hub for streamlining enterprise cryptographic asset management, and the operational pressure is rising as code-signing and TLS certificate lifecycles shorten, making automated issuance and renewal increasingly important for large organizations.
The platform is to serve Deutsche Bahn’s group companies from DB Systel’s portfolio.
Sources: Tenders Electronic Daily
–
By the ID Tech Editorial Team
