Hardware security modules, public-key infrastructure and cryptographic key management — designed, implemented and migrated by an onshore team with deep, cross-vendor expertise. We work across the major platforms rather than being tied to one, so the advice you get is about your risk and your estate — not a single product line.
Cross-vendor expertise / Onshore, Brisbane-based / FIPS 140-3 · key management · PKI
Most consultancies in this space either assess your cryptography and walk away, or they sell you a box. We do the part the field leaves open: we help you select the right platform, design it, run the key ceremony, implement it, migrate to it, and operate it — vendor-agnostic from end to end. Because we work across the major platforms rather than being tied to one, the selection step is genuinely about fit, not a single product line.
Define your assurance level, throughput and integration needs, then shortlist platforms on fit — FIPS 140-3 level, general-purpose vs cloud, on-prem vs hosted. No allegiance to any vendor.
Architecture for high availability, separation of duties, network placement and disaster recovery — with a key-management policy and crypto-control documentation your auditors can read.
Witnessed, documented key-generation ceremonies with split knowledge and dual control — the evidence regulators and high-assurance customers expect, done to procedure.
Stand up the HSMs, integrate with your applications, PKI and KMS, and validate against the standards that apply — FIPS 140-3 and your own crypto-control requirements.
Move keys and workloads off legacy or end-of-life platforms (or between vendors) without breaking production — the migration work assessment-only and single-vendor firms rarely want to own.
Key lifecycle management, rotation, rekey, escrow and retirement on an ongoing cadence — so the assurance you paid for holds long after go-live.
An HSM protects the keys that protect everything else — generated, stored and used inside tamper-resistant hardware so the key material never sits in software where it can be copied. These are the general-purpose use cases we’re asked about most.
HSM-backed keys for database (TDE), storage, backup and file-level encryption — so the keys protecting your most sensitive data are held to a hardware standard, not left in a config file.
Protect software-supply-chain, release and document-signing keys in an HSM, so signatures can be trusted and the signing keys can’t be exfiltrated from a build server.
Root and issuing CA keys, device identity and IoT provisioning anchored to an HSM — the hardware root of trust serious PKI depends on.
A public-key infrastructure is only as trustworthy as the way its roots and issuing CAs are protected — which is why serious PKI lives on an HSM. We design and build PKI that holds up to audit and scale: root and issuing CA hierarchies, HSM-backed key protection, certificate policy and practice statements (CP/CPS), and the automation that stops certificates expiring at the worst possible moment.
Offline root, issuing CA design and HSM-backed key protection — Microsoft ADCS, EJBCA or managed PKI, chosen on fit.
Issuance, renewal, revocation, OCSP/CRL and discovery — with automation (ACME, SCEP, EST) so expiries stop being outages.
Certificate policy and practice statements, crypto-control documentation and the evidence that maps PKI to ISO 27001 and your obligations.
Keys and secrets sprawl as fast as your environment does. We bring order to it: a single key-management policy that spans on-prem HSMs and cloud KMS, with the residency and control model your risk appetite (and your regulators) require.
Bring-your-own-key and hold-your-own-key designs so you keep control of the key material even when the workload runs in someone else’s cloud.
AWS KMS / CloudHSM, Azure Key Vault and Managed HSM, and Google Cloud KMS — integrated with a consistent policy rather than configured ad hoc.
HashiCorp Vault and equivalent platforms for application secrets, with HSM-backed roots of trust and proper rotation — not credentials in config files.
We design and implement across the HSM and key-management platforms that matter, and recommend the one that fits your assurance level, throughput and budget. Here’s where each tends to shine — and because we work across all of them rather than being tied to one product line, that’s a recommendation based on fit.
Broad integration support and strong FIPS coverage, with network and PCIe options — a dependable general-purpose choice across a wide range of applications.
The Security World key-management model makes it a strong fit for PKI and code- and document-signing, with mature DevOps integration.
A flexible firmware model and broad general-purpose coverage — a capable, configurable platform across many use cases.
FIPS-validated, single-tenant HSMs you control inside AWS — ideal when your workloads and keys live in AWS and you want hardware-grade control there.
FIPS-validated, single-tenant key management within Azure — a strong fit for Azure-native estates that need dedicated key protection.
Common across existing installed-base estates, now under the Thales line — platforms we know well and routinely support and modernise.
We work across all of them and recommend the fit — multi-vendor by capability, not tied to a single product line.
The cryptography you deploy today has to survive the migration to post-quantum algorithms tomorrow. With NIST’s first PQC standards (ML-KEM and ML-DSA) now published, the practical question isn’t “when do we switch” — it’s “can we switch without re-engineering everything”. That’s crypto-agility, and it’s a design choice you make now.
Discover where cryptography actually lives — algorithms, key sizes, certificates and the systems that depend on them — so you know what a transition touches.
Abstract crypto behind interfaces and HSM-backed key stores so algorithms can be swapped without rebuilding applications.
A staged, hybrid-first path to ML-KEM/ML-DSA aligned to NIST guidance and your own risk timeline — pragmatic, not panicked.
We hold partnerships across the major platforms and work across all of them — so the one we recommend is the one that fits your risk and budget, not the only box we’re tied to. Our independence is technical: cross-vendor depth, not a single product line.
Brisbane-based, Australian-owned and onshore. Your keys, your ceremonies and your crypto-control evidence stay in-country, with people you can meet.
We don’t stop at a report. We select, design, run the key ceremony, implement, migrate and operate — owning the engineering the assessment-only firms leave open.
Grounded in FIPS 140-3, NIST cryptographic guidance and the ISO 27001 cryptography controls — so the design holds up to auditors and high-assurance customers.
This work is led by Ashley Knowles, CISSP and ISO 27001 Lead Auditor — the founder of Securitribe, and the person accountable for the cryptographic engineering we deliver. You deal with a named, certified practitioner who has designed and run key-management, HSM and PKI work in high-assurance environments, not an anonymous account manager.
Our capability spans HSM selection and deployment, witnessed key ceremonies, PKI design, key & secrets management and cryptographic migration — delivered onshore and mapped to the standards your auditors and customers care about. We’re vendor-agnostic, so the credibility we trade on is the quality of the advice, not a partner badge.
You can review how we frame and deliver engagements on our case studies hub.
A fixed-scope way to start without committing to a full programme. The Readiness Sprint gives you a clear current-state picture of your cryptographic estate and a defensible plan for what to do next — typically over a couple of weeks.
Where keys, certificates and HSMs live today, and where the gaps and end-of-life risks sit.
How your estate measures against the standards that apply — FIPS 140-3 and the cryptographic controls your auditors and customers expect.
A sequenced plan — select, design, implement, migrate — leadership can fund and act on with confidence.
To show how the work actually plays out, here is a representative engagement — a regulated enterprise consolidating its key management and migrating off an ageing, end-of-life HSM. Representative of a typical engagement; client details generalised.
An organisation had cryptographic keys scattered across software stores and an HSM the vendor had announced end-of-life, with a support cut-off approaching. An enterprise customer was now asking them to prove their keys were protected to a hardware standard — and their incumbent supplier was pushing a like-for-like refresh they weren’t confident was the right fit.
We ran a fit-first selection across the platforms that genuinely suited their assurance level, integration needs and budget — and, because we work across the major platforms rather than being tied to one, the shortlist was about their estate, not a single product line. We designed the target architecture and key hierarchy, ran witnessed key ceremonies to procedure, and planned the migration around their change windows.
They consolidated key management under a single policy, HSM-backed, and migrated off the legacy device without an unplanned production outage. They came out with crypto-control evidence their auditor and their enterprise customer could read, and an estate sized for where the business is going rather than where it had been.
No. We hold partnerships across the major platforms and have the technical depth to recommend and implement whichever fits — Thales, Entrust, Utimaco or cloud. Unlike a single-vendor reseller, our recommendation isn’t constrained to the one product line we’re tied to — it’s about your assurance level, throughput and budget.
It depends on the job. Thales Luna and Entrust nShield are both strong general-purpose platforms — nShield’s Security World model suits PKI and code-signing, while Luna has very broad integration support. Utimaco offers a flexible firmware model and broad general-purpose coverage. We’ll shortlist on fit against your assurance level and integrations, and let you make an informed call.
It comes down to where your workloads and keys need to live, your control and residency requirements, and how much operational lift you want to own. On-prem and single-tenant cloud HSMs (AWS CloudHSM, Azure Managed HSM) give you the most control; managed cloud KMS trades some control for less operational burden. We design across all of them under one key-management policy and help you pick the right mix.
FIPS 140-2/140-3 for the devices themselves, NIST cryptographic guidance for algorithms and key management, and the cryptography controls in ISO 27001 (Annex A) for how it all maps to your wider security programme. We make sure the design produces the crypto-control evidence your auditors and high-assurance customers ask for.
If you handle high-value or regulated data, run a PKI, sign code or documents, or have customer or regulatory key-protection requirements, then usually yes — software key storage won’t meet the bar. If you’re not sure, the Readiness Sprint is built to answer exactly that question honestly.
Both, and the hybrid in between. We design across on-prem HSMs and cloud platforms — AWS KMS/CloudHSM, Azure Key Vault and Managed HSM, and Google Cloud KMS — under a single key-management policy, including BYOK and HYOK so you keep control of key material in someone else’s cloud.
Yes. Cryptographic migration — moving keys and workloads off legacy or end-of-life devices, or between vendors, without breaking production — is some of the most valuable work we do, and it’s the part assessment-only and single-vendor firms tend to avoid.
The pragmatic answer is to build crypto-agility now, not to rip-and-replace. With NIST’s PQC standards (ML-KEM and ML-DSA) published, the priority is a crypto inventory and an architecture that can swap algorithms without re-engineering applications. We’ll give you a staged, hybrid-first roadmap aligned to your real risk timeline.
Book a 30-minute HSM/PKI discovery call. We’ll talk through your environment and where the cryptographic risk sits, and if a fixed-scope start makes sense we’ll scope an HSM/PKI Readiness Sprint.
Book a 30-minute HSM/PKI discovery call and we’ll review your cryptographic estate and where HSM-grade protection, PKI or key management fits. Vendor-neutral, onshore, and honest about what we do and don’t do. Call 1300 271 407 or visit us at Level 14/167 Eagle Street, Brisbane.
