Azure key vault use case - Certificate Management for secure file encyption

Question

Our use case is to use azure key vault for managing certificates. the certificates will be issues by entrust CA . the certificates will be used to encrypt and share sensitive files.
Is Azure key vault usable for this use case. Will it integrate with or can an external CA (Entrust ) be used.
Will we be able to integrate our application with azure key vault to share public keys for file encryption and request private certificates for decryption of the files.

Answer 1

@laolu , yes, this is integration is possible with Azure Key Vault. But the flow depends on the external CA. Azure Key vault can be integrated to external CA's for generating private certs using private keys. Here are the two different flows involved depending on the partnership.

1.Creating a certificate with a Certificate Authority that is partnered with Key Vault:

Digicert and GlobalSign are officially partnered with Azure Key Vault and here is how the cert creation flow takes place,

Summary: Here, Key vault will be directly communicating with external partnered CA's and creates the certificate.

2.Creating a certificate with a CA not partnered with Key Vault:

This method allows working with other CAs than Key Vault's partnered providers, meaning your organization can work with a CA of its choice.

Summary: Here Key Vault will not directly interact with external CA instead your application sends the CSR (Certificate Signing Request) to the chosen CA and receives the certificate.

Ref: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/key-vault/certificates/certificate-scenarios

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