ADCS was not built for the modern enterprise. Your PKI should be.
Replace the hidden costs, security risks, and operational burdens of Microsoft ADCS with a modern, sovereign, and fully managed PKI as a service from Nexus.
For years, Active Directory Certificate Services (ADCS) has been the default on-premise PKI. But its limitations are now a major roadblock to innovation and security. It lacks the flexibility for modern cloud and DevOps environments, carries a surprisingly high Total Cost of Ownership (TCO), and has known security gaps that put your organization at risk.
Fundamentally, ADCS is a feature of an operating system, not a dedicated high-assurance security platform. As a result, it lacks the built-in capabilities required by modern regulations such as NIS2 and DORA—capabilities like cryptographically signed audit logs for true accountability and granular, certificate-based access controls to safeguard the core of your trust infrastructure. These features, however, come standard with the Nexus platform.
Unleash the power of PKI
The Nexus Smart ID PKI allows governments and businesses to enable trust with certificate-based identities for citizens, employees, applications, things, and smart devices. Providing a solid security foundation for strong authentication, email encryption, digital signing, and securing IoT devices and applications.
Test our PKI service against NIST algorithms!
- FIPS 203 (ML-KEM or CRYSTALS-Kyber)
- FIPS 204 (ML-DSA or CRYSTALS-Dilithium)
- FIPS 205 (SLH-DSA or SPHINCS+)
Moving to the cloud? Microsoft Cloud PKI is not an ADCS replacement.
Microsoft's new Cloud PKI offering is a limited, add-on service for Intune, not a full-featured enterprise PKI. It cannot replace the broad capabilities of your existing ADCS and lacks the essential automation protocols (like ACME and REST APIs) and algorithm support required by a modern enterprise.
Relying on it means managing multiple, disconnected solutions and still hosting your own offline root.
Nexus GO PKI:
The sovereign, cloud-ready choice
Nexus GO PKI is a complete, fully managed service that replaces the entirety of your ADCS infrastructure, empowering your digital transformation securely and efficiently.
PKI platform comparison: ADCS, Microsoft Cloud, and Nexus PKI
Feature |
ADCS |
Microsoft Cloud PKI |
Nexus PKI |
|---|---|---|---|
Windows AutoEnrollment |
✅ | ❌ | ✅ |
Intune (SCEP) Support |
✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
Workload Automation (ACME) |
❌ | ❌ | ✅ |
Non-Windows & IoT Devices |
Limited |
❌ | ✅ |
Fully Managed Service |
❌ |
Partial |
✅ |
Sovereign EU Hosting |
N/A |
❌ | ✅ |
PQC Ready |
Unclear |
❌ | ✅ |
Integrated CLM Visibility |
❌ | ❌ | ✅ |
Evaluating PKI solutions?
Are you researching a new PKI solution to set up a private CA? Or do you wish to migrate to a comprehensive, modular, and future-forward solution?
We have compiled a guide that compares the Nexus Smart ID PKI with Microsoft Active Directory Certificate Services to help you decide.
Beyond migration: Achieve full visibility with integrated CLM
Replacing your ADCS is the critical first step. The next is gaining visibility into all your certificates, including public SSL/TLS and those issued by “shadow IT” PKIs.
The Nexus CLM solution offers powerful Certificate Lifecycle Management (CLM) to discover every certificate in your environment, automate their entire lifecycle to prevent outages, and ensure continuous compliance with standards such as NIS2. It even extends automation to systems that don’t support standard protocols—giving you full control over your entire certificate fleet.
Explore more PKI resources
PKI enables organizations to secure IoT communication, enable digital document signing, and everything in between! Martin Furuhed, the PKI expert at Nexus, explains what PKI really is - in 4 minutes.
Do you think you have secured your organization and solved your issues with strong authentication, data encryption, and digital signatures just because you are using the public key infrastructure (PKI) security method?
Encryption techniques have been used for millennia to protect communication – first on Mesopotamian clay tablets and most recently in the internet of things (IoT). Discover how PKI evolved into the most sophisticated security technology developed by mankind.