For executives

Threshold trust without vendor lock-in

Confium replaces single-key CA trust with configurable threshold quorum. No licensing fees, no proprietary protocol, no per-transaction cost. BSD-2-Clause open source, funded by NLnet NGI Zero PET and Mozilla MOSS.

The business case in one paragraph

Public Key Infrastructure today has a structural weakness: every Certificate Authority holds a single private key that can sign anything. If that key is compromised — DigiNotar 2011, Symantec 2015–2018, Let's Encrypt 2020 — every certificate the CA ever issued is called into question. The cost of each incident: millions of dollars, disrupted services, eroded public trust. Confium replaces the single-key model with threshold cryptography: a configurable quorum (e.g. 3 of 5 directors) must participate in every signing operation. An attacker must compromise multiple independent parties simultaneously to forge a signature.

What you get

  • Structural risk reduction. No single point of compromise. Compromising one party reveals one share, mathematically useless on its own.
  • Post-quantum migration without re-issuance. Composite signatures (Ed25519 + ML-DSA-65) ship as a software upgrade. Verifiers that haven't upgraded still accept; verifiers that have already migrated.
  • Audit trail by default. Every signing operation anchors into an RFC 6962 transparency log. Split-view attacks become detectable.
  • Vendor independence. PKCS#11 v3.0, OpenSSL 3.0 provider, JCE — Confium slots into the infrastructure you already operate. No proprietary protocol.
  • Open-source sustainability. BSD-2-Clause licensed. Funded by NLnet NGI Zero PET (European Commission) and Mozilla MOSS. No CLA, no per-transaction fees.

The three deployment modes

Confium is layered across three deployment modes. The same engine and primitives serve all three; what changes is the integration boundary.

Confium three-mode architecture: a shared engine serving peer-to-peer, PKI drop-in, and Sovereign PKI consumers. CONFIUM ENGINE Plugin loader · FFI · Registry · Coordinator MODE 1 Peer-to-Peer Direct TC sessions MODE 2 PKI Drop-in Adapters · PQ migration MODE 3 Sovereign PKI Institutional PKI CONSUMERS MPC Custody BFT PKCS#11 OpenSSL JCE · TLS CNML Accreditation Calibration BSD-2-Clause · github.com/confium

Cost model

Confium is free open-source software. There are no licensing fees, no per-transaction charges, no proprietary protocol royalties. The real cost of deployment is engineering effort and operational overhead:

  • Engineering. Days to weeks for initial integration, depending on which mode and which existing infrastructure you're adapting. Mode 2 (PKI drop-in) is typically fastest because the consumer code stays unchanged.
  • Infrastructure. One coordinator process per region, plus the participating signer processes. Commodity hardware — no HSMs required, though Confium integrates with HSMs if you have them.
  • Operations. Standard monitoring (metrics, logs, alerts) plus transparency-log auditing. No specialized SRE skills required beyond what a CA already demands.

For a Mode 3 institutional deployment (dozens of signers across multiple jurisdictions), total cost is comparable to running a conventional CA — but with no single point of failure and no proprietary lock-in.

Compliance posture

FrameworkStatusHow Confium supports it
FIPS 140 (US) Mode flag Routes cryptographic operations through FIPS-validated plugins (e.g. Botan in FIPS mode).
eIDAS (EU) Algorithm policies Jurisdictional allow-lists enforce EU P-384+ requirement at the engine level.
SM2/SM3 (China) Plugin-based SM plugin bundle adds SM2/SM3 algorithms; engine refuses disallowed algorithms per policy.
HIPAA / FedRAMP Audit trail Every signing operation produces a structured audit record; transparency log anchors events immutably.

See the compliance officer guide for the detailed matrix and the compliance docs.

Reference deployments

Sovereign PKI (Mode 3) is the right shape for institutional certificate infrastructure where no single party can be trusted. Six scenarios where it already fits:

  • Calibration registries — BIPM-style metrology chains.
  • Pharma regulator approvals — multi-jurisdiction drug sign-off.
  • Academic accreditation — cross-institutional credential verification.
  • Supply-chain provenance — manufacturing attestation in transparency logs.
  • Treaty organizations — multi-state cooperative instruments.
  • Certified instruments registry — a reference Mode 3 deployment.

Migration timeline

Most deployments move through four phases over 6–18 months:

  1. Pilot (weeks 1–4). Stand up a coordinator, generate test shares, verify signing works end-to-end in a non-production environment.
  2. Parallel (months 2–4). Run Confium alongside the existing CA. New issuances go through both; verifiers prefer Confium when available.
  3. Cutover (months 5–9). Production traffic moves to Confium. Legacy CA kept as backup.
  4. Decommission (months 10–18). Legacy CA is retired. Confium is the sole signing path.

Mode 2 (PKI drop-in) deployments can compress this timeline significantly because the existing consumer code doesn't change.

Where to go next

  • Three deployment modes — pick the shape that matches your integration surface.
  • Security model — the threat table and what Confium does and doesn't protect against.
  • Comparison — Confium vs HSMs, conventional CAs, KMS, and Sigstore.
  • Architecture guide — hand this to your security architect.
  • Funding — who pays for Confium and what each grant covers.