Modernising defence digital identity infrastructure for long-term resilience

At a glance

What this is: A defence identity modernisation case study shows how outdated PKI, credential management, and device security were replaced with a more resilient, standards-aligned identity stack.

Why it matters: It matters because IAM, PAM, and identity architects need to treat key storage, biometric authentication, and lifecycle governance as one operating model across regulated environments.

By the numbers:

• Only 5.7% of organisations have full visibility into their service accounts.
• 92% of organisations expose NHIs to third parties, raising concerns about supply chain security.
• 71% of NHIs are not rotated within recommended time frames, increasing the risk of compromise over time.

👉 Read Intercede's case study on defence digital identity modernisation

Context

In defence identity programmes, the core problem is rarely authentication alone. The real issue is that outdated PKI, credential management, and device-bound trust often age out together, leaving security teams to modernise identity, cryptography, and endpoint protection at the same time. For a national Ministry of Defence, that makes identity infrastructure a resilience issue, not just an access-control issue.

This case study shows a typical pattern for regulated environments: legacy systems reach end of life, the organisation needs stronger assurance, and the replacement has to work across separate environments without creating vendor lock-in. The identity question is therefore broader than login experience or smartcard support. It is whether the programme can preserve trust, compliance, and operational continuity while the underlying security architecture changes.

Key questions

Q: How should security teams modernise legacy PKI without breaking identity trust?

A: They should treat PKI migration as a trust-chain programme, not a certificate swap. That means aligning credential issuance, revocation, device binding, recovery, and audit evidence before cutover. The objective is to preserve assurance semantics while the underlying platform changes, especially in regulated environments where identity continuity matters as much as the new technology itself.

Q: Why do biometrics need to stay within the credential boundary?

A: Keeping biometrics inside the credential boundary reduces exposure of templates and preserves the link between the person, the device, and the credential. If biometric comparison is spread across multiple systems, the assurance model fragments and recovery becomes harder to govern. Match-on-card or similar designs keep the control focused and the risk surface smaller.

Q: What should organisations review before introducing secure key storage into an IAM programme?

A: They should review who can generate, recover, and revoke key material, how dependencies on a certificate authority are handled, and what happens during migration or outage. Secure key storage is only useful when the recovery model, separation of duties, and audit trail are explicit and defensible.

Q: How do phased identity rollouts reduce risk in regulated environments?

A: Phased rollout limits the blast radius of change and makes control failures easier to isolate. Separate environments can reveal hidden dependencies, such as biometric storage needs or device compatibility issues, before full production expansion. That approach supports continuity, but only if rollback and governance are planned with the same rigour as deployment.

Technical breakdown

How modern PKI and credential management fit together

PKI provides the cryptographic trust layer, while a credential management system governs issuance, lifecycle, and policy enforcement for identities bound to cards, devices, or tokens. In this case, the architecture had to support a replacement PKI alongside a credential layer that could manage multiple environment types and device classes. That matters because the security value comes from coordinated identity lifecycle control, not from cryptography alone. When PKI and CMS are refreshed separately, organisations often create trust gaps during cutover, migration, or revocation. The safer model is to treat issuance, binding, and recovery as one governed chain.

Practical implication: Treat PKI migration and credential lifecycle design as one programme so issuance, revocation, and recovery stay aligned during transition.

Biometric match-on-card and end-user device assurance

Biometric match-on-card keeps biometric comparison on the smartcard rather than exposing template matching broadly across systems. That reduces the amount of sensitive biometric material moving through the environment and strengthens the link between the cardholder and the credential. The article frames this as both a usability and security improvement, which is important in defence settings where assurance has to coexist with operational practicality. The key architectural point is that biometrics become part of the identity boundary, not a separate convenience layer. That changes how teams think about device security, trust anchors, and fallback authentication paths.

Practical implication: Keep biometric processing tied to the trusted device boundary and review fallback paths with the same assurance standard as primary authentication.

Secure key storage for high-assurance identity operations

Key storage is often treated as plumbing, but in high-assurance environments it is a control point for confidentiality, recovery, and separation of duties. The case study highlights a CA-independent key storage capability that can generate, manage, and recover sensitive key material without tying operational trust to a single certificate authority. That is relevant where systems must survive change, support recovery, and avoid unnecessary dependency on one vendor or one trust domain. It also shows that key custody is part of identity governance, because the ability to recover or reissue keys directly affects continuity and auditability.

Practical implication: Review where key custody, recovery authority, and certificate dependencies sit before you modernise regulated identity systems.

NHI Mgmt Group analysis

Identity modernisation in defence is a governance problem, not a hardware refresh. This case study shows that PKI, credential management, biometrics, and device trust all had to move together because end-of-life infrastructure creates overlapping risk. The lesson for identity teams is that resilience depends on managing the full trust chain, not just replacing one component.

Biometric assurance only works when it stays inside the credential boundary. Match-on-card improves control by keeping biometric processing tied to the smartcard rather than dispersing sensitive data across the environment. That is a material governance shift for regulated identity programmes because it reduces the number of places assurance material can leak or be misused.

Secure key storage is a lifecycle control, not a storage feature. Key generation, recovery, and managed access define whether cryptographic identity can survive reissue, migration, and operational failure. For defence and other high-assurance sectors, that makes key custody part of identity resilience planning, not an implementation detail.

Vendor independence is an identity control objective when environments must outlast product cycles. The customer’s requirement for flexibility reflects a broader reality in NHI and human identity programmes alike: long-lived identity infrastructure must accommodate change without forcing a redesign of trust every few years. That is especially important where compliance, continuity, and future device support all sit in the same programme.

FIPS 201 PIV remains relevant because assurance standards still anchor trust decisions. Standards-based identity design gives practitioners a stable reference point when modernising legacy systems, especially in sectors where device, credential, and policy decisions must be defensible over many years. The practical conclusion is simple: modernisation should preserve assurance semantics even when the implementation changes.

From our research:

• 92% of organisations expose NHIs to third parties, raising concerns about supply chain security, according to Ultimate Guide to NHIs.
• Only 20% have formal processes for offboarding and revoking API keys, and even fewer have procedures for rotating them.
• That offboarding gap connects directly to Ultimate Guide to NHIs , Lifecycle Processes for Managing NHIs, where lifecycle governance becomes the real control point.

What this signals

Identity modernisation will keep converging with lifecycle governance. As regulated programmes refresh PKI, biometric controls, and device trust, the limiting factor becomes whether identity can be issued, recovered, and retired without losing assurance. That is where long-lived programmes tend to fail, and where architecture choices now need lifecycle evidence as much as technical performance.

With 92% of organisations exposing NHIs to third parties, the defence-sector lesson is broader than smartcards or biometrics. Any programme that depends on external vendors, shared infrastructure, or long-lived keys must assume that identity governance and supply-chain control are the same problem.

Trust-chain resilience: modern identity stacks should be judged by how cleanly they handle change, not just by how strongly they authenticate. If your programme cannot survive CA replacement, device refresh, or recovery without rethinking access semantics, the identity architecture is not yet resilient.

For practitioners

• Map the full identity trust chain before replacing legacy infrastructure Inventory PKI, credential management, biometric binding, key storage, and device dependencies as one change boundary so you can see where cutover risk will concentrate.
• Separate biometric assurance from transport and storage layers Keep biometric match-on-card or equivalent controls tied to the credential boundary so sensitive templates do not become widely replicated identity data.
• Design key recovery and reissue as formal governance processes Document who can recover, reissue, and revoke sensitive key material, and make those authorities auditable across each environment.
• Plan for multi-environment rollout and rollback Treat phased deployment across separate environments as a control requirement, not just a delivery approach, so failures can be isolated without collapsing trust across the programme.

Key takeaways

• The case study shows that defence identity modernisation is about preserving trust across PKI, credentials, biometrics, and devices at once.
• The operational evidence points to phased rollout, multi-environment support, and key recovery as the controls that make long-lived identity infrastructure viable.
• Practitioners should treat assurance standards, lifecycle governance, and vendor independence as one design problem rather than separate workstreams.

Key terms

• Credential Management System: A credential management system governs the issuance, binding, renewal, and revocation of credentials used by people or devices. In high-assurance environments it also carries policy, recovery, and audit responsibilities, making it part of the identity control plane rather than just an administration tool.
• Match-on-Card Authentication: Match-on-card authentication performs biometric comparison on the smartcard itself instead of sending biometric data to a central system. That design reduces biometric exposure, strengthens device-bound assurance, and changes how organisations should think about fallback authentication and recovery.
• Key Storage: Key storage is the controlled generation, retention, recovery, and protection of cryptographic key material. In identity programmes it matters because access, continuity, and auditability all depend on who can recover keys, under what authority, and in what failure conditions.
• FIPS 201 PIV: FIPS 201 PIV is the US federal personal identity verification standard used to establish high-assurance identity credentials. In practice it defines how identity proofing, credential issuance, and authentication should be structured so that trust remains defensible across regulated environments.

What's in the full article

Intercede's full case study covers the implementation detail this post intentionally leaves for the source:

• The integration sequence for MyID CMS, MyID SecureVault, and the new PKI component across separate environments.
• The deployment constraints that shaped the phased rollout and the December 2026 completion target.
• The device and smartcard options considered, including future support for mobile platforms, USB tokens, and virtual smartcards.
• The operational specifics behind secure biometric storage and CA-independent key recovery.

👉 The full Intercede case study covers the rollout approach, platform integration, and future device support.

Deepen your knowledge

NHI governance, agentic AI identity, and machine identity lifecycle are core topics in our NHI Foundation Level course, the industry's only accredited NHI security programme. If you are building or maturing an IAM programme, it is worth exploring.