All analysis was generated autonomously, without human review. Scores are analytical opinions drawn from the cited public sources, without hands-on testing. They are not audits, certifications, investment reports, purchasing advice, or evaluations of quality.
Entrust spent decades as the party others trust to issue cards, run certificate authorities, and anchor keys in hardware. Then Google stopped trusting its newly issued public TLS certificates over what it called a pattern of compliance failures, and by 2025 Entrust had sold that certificate business to Sectigo. The rest looks healthy from outside. TechCrunch reported in 2024 it was profitable, with revenue near a billion dollars and about 10,000 customers, KuppingerCole rates it a leader in passwordless authentication, and NIST validates its nShield hardware. A vendor whose product is trust must now prove its identity, HSM, and PKI lines were never the part buyers doubted, as platforms court the same regulated accounts.
| Description | Entrust sells digital security hardware and software, spanning identity verification and authentication, card and ID issuance, certificate and key lifecycle management, hardware security modules, and post-quantum cryptography. The company is privately held. | [f1] |
|---|---|---|
| Founded | 1969 | [f2] |
| HQ | Shakopee, Minnesota, United States | [f1] |
| Latest funding | Privately held by Datacard Group (acquired Entrust in 2013), with no outside venture funding and reported profitability | [f3] |
| Product | What it does |
|---|---|
| nShield HSMs | Hardware security modules that provide a FIPS-certified, tamper-resistant root of trust for generating, protecting, and managing cryptographic keys. |
| PKI and Certificate Lifecycle Management | Software for running private and managed certificate authorities and for discovering, managing, and automating keys, certificates, and secrets across an enterprise. |
| Identity Verification | AI-powered document, biometric, and data checks (built on the acquired Onfido technology) that confirm customer, citizen, and employee identities at onboarding. |
| Card and Credential Issuance | High-volume hardware, software, services, and supplies (the Datacard product line) for issuing physical and digital payment cards, national IDs, and other secure credentials. |
Cyber Defense Matrix
| Identify | Protect | Detect | Respond | Recover | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Devices Workstations, servers, phones, tablets, storage, network devices, IoT infrastructure, and similar hardware. | |||||
| Applications Software, interactions, and application flows on the devices. | |||||
| Networks Connections and traffic flowing among devices and apps, plus communication paths. | |||||
| Data Content at rest, in transit, or in use across devices, apps, and networks. | |||||
| Users The people using the devices, apps, networks, and data. |
Entrust issues credentials and payment cards, runs private and managed certificate authorities, provides FIPS-certified HSMs that anchor cryptographic keys, and verifies human identities at onboarding, defending data, device, user, and application trust, and is mapped to the Cyber Defense Matrix. [f4]
How well the company can compete in its security market, scored across eight dimensions against public evidence.
| Dimension | Score |
|---|---|
| Problem Clarity How precisely the company defines its problem, with evidence the problem exists at the scale claimed. | 4/5 |
| Capability Depth How specific the technical capabilities are, with evidence beyond marketing claims such as docs, demos, and third-party validation. | 4/5 |
| Market Timing Whether the market is ready for this product, with evidence that buyers are actively seeking solutions. | 4/5 |
| Team Credibility Demonstrated domain expertise with public signals such as prior exits, publications, and industry recognition. | 3/5 |
| GTM Proof Evidence of actual traction (customers, revenue signals, partnerships) beyond stated intentions. | 4/5 |
| Funding Efficiency Whether funding matches go-to-market ambition, with signs of capital-efficient growth. | 4/5 |
| Category Clarity Whether the company creates or fits a recognizable category that buyers can quickly place in their stack. | 4/5 |
| Incumbent Defensibility How vulnerable the core value proposition is to absorption as a feature by a platform vendor. | 3/5 |
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A closer look at the company's product strategy, measuring how defensible it is against market forces and examining the eight areas behind it.
press the advantage
| Dimension | Score |
|---|---|
| Value Delivery Does the product sell software as the product, or judgment, trust, or accountability with software as the delivery mechanism. | 1/3 |
| Switching Cost How expensive leaving is for a customer: data portability, integrations, learned workflows, network effects, regulatory data residency. | 3/3 |
| Compliance Moat Whether certifications, liability acceptance, or audit trails block an easy replacement. | 2/3 |
| Problem Complexity Whether the product requires ML, optimization, real-time systems, or years of specialized expertise. | 3/3 |
| Buyer Profile Whether buyers are SMB operators, mid-market IT teams, or regulated enterprises and governments with procurement gates. | 3/3 |
| Layer Whether the product is an end-user application, a platform with application features, or infrastructure other applications depend on. | 2/3 |
| Proprietary Data, Content, or IP Whether the product accumulates datasets, content licenses, or IP that a rival cannot recreate from scratch. | 1/3 |
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The reasoning for the scores, the strategy deep dive, the business risks, and more. AI access comes with the purchase, so your AI tools can read the full profile too. You keep 12 months of access.
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| Id | Source | Tier | Accessed |
|---|---|---|---|
| f1 | Wikipedia: Entrust company overview | research | 2026-06-21 |
| f2 | Entrust Datacard becomes Entrust (company heritage) | official | 2026-06-21 |
| f3 | TechCrunch: Entrust private ownership, revenue, and profitability | press | 2026-06-28 |
| f4 | Entrust identity-centric security solutions | official | 2026-06-21 |
| Id | Source | Tier | Accessed |
|---|---|---|---|
| s1 | Entrust homepage identity-centric security “Identity-Centric Security ... Protecting People, Devices, and Data” | official | 2026-06-28 |
| s2 | Entrust nShield hardware security modules “Comprehensive FIPS-certified HSM solutions for enterprise cryptographic security. ... ZF Friedrichshafen AG Secures Wireless Manufacturing with Entrust nShield HSMs” | official | 2026-06-28 |
| s3 | Entrust PKI software solutions “All-in-one software-based PKI appliance for simplified, scalable, and secure PKI management.” | official | 2026-06-28 |
| s4 | Entrust identity verification solutions “Onboard customers, employees, and contractors faster with AI-powered identity verification that returns results within seconds.” | official | 2026-06-28 |
| s5 | Entrust leadership team and CEO Tony Ball “Tony Ball is the Chief Executive Officer of Entrust ... Tony brings more than two decades of global leadership experience across identity, authentication, and security technologies. Since joining Entrust in 2016 ... Tony held senior executive roles at HID Global and Gemalto” | official | 2026-06-28 |
| s6 | Entrust: Restoring Trust after the Chrome distrust decision “We are committed to restoring trust with the browser and web community and returning to the Chrome Root Store.” | official | 2026-06-28 |
| s7 | Entrust completes Onfido acquisition “Entrust, a global leader in trusted payments, identities, and data security, today announced it completed its acquisition of Onfido, a global leader in identity verification.” | official | 2026-06-28 |
| s8 | Wikipedia: Entrust company overview and acquisition history “Entrust operated a publicly trusted certificate authority until selling its public certificate business to Sectigo in January 2025. Notable acquisitions include nCipher (2019), HyTrust (2021), WorldReach (2021), and Onfido (2024).” | research | 2026-06-28 |
| s9 | Google Online Security Blog: Entrust Certificate Distrust “Over the past several years, publicly disclosed incident reports highlighted a pattern of concerning behaviors by Entrust that fall short of the above expectations, and has eroded confidence in their competence, reliability, and integrity as a publicly-trusted CA Owner.” | press | 2026-06-28 |
| s10 | Infosecurity Magazine: Chrome Update Will Block Entrust Certificates by November 2024 “Chrome version 127 and higher will no longer trust new TLS server authentication certificates from Entrust and AffirmTrust. The move follows a series of reported compliance failures, unfulfilled improvement commitments and insufficient progress in addressing publicly disclosed incident reports.” | press | 2026-06-28 |
| s11 | MES Computing: Sectigo Completes Entrust Certificate Migration Following Acquisition “Sectigo called the migration the "largest-ever automated migration of public certificate infrastructure," saying it had migrated more than a half-million certificates.” | press | 2026-06-28 |
| s12 | TechCrunch: Entrust buying Onfido, with revenue, profitability, and ownership detail “Entrust itself is profitable, and it has been for a number of years, and it currently has "just under $1 billion" in revenue annually with about 10,000 customers ... It has no shareholders as such and is privately owned by a German family” | press | 2026-06-28 |
| s13 | KuppingerCole Leadership Compass: Passwordless Authentication for Enterprises (Entrust Overall Leader) “The Overall Leaders (in alphabetical order) are 1Kosmos, Beyond Identity, Cisco, CyberArk, Entrust, HID, HYPR, IBM, Microsoft, Okta, OneSpan, Ping Identity, and Thales.” | research | 2026-06-28 |
| s14 | NIST CMVP: Entrust nShield validated cryptographic modules “5329 | Entrust Corporation | nShield 5s Hardware Security Module | Hardware | 06/15/2026” | research | 2026-07-10 |
| s15 | NVD CVE-2025-59702: Entrust nShield tamper-event falsification “Entrust nShield Connect XC, nShield 5c, and nShield HSMi through 13.6.11, or 13.7, allow a physically proximate attacker with elevated privileges to falsify tamper events by accessing internal components.” | research | 2026-06-28 |
| s16 | NIST: First three finalized post-quantum encryption standards (FIPS 203/204/205) “NIST has released a final set of encryption tools designed to withstand the attack of a quantum computer. ... NIST is encouraging computer system administrators to begin transitioning to the new standards as soon as possible.” | research | 2026-06-28 |
| s17 | CA/Browser Forum members list (Entrust as Certification Authority) “The CA/Browser Forum includes the following members: Certification Authorities ... DigiCert ... Entrust ... Sectigo” | regulatory | 2026-06-28 |
| Id | Source | Tier | Accessed |
|---|---|---|---|
| s1 | Entrust homepage identity-centric security “Identity-Centric Security ... Protecting People, Devices, and Data” | official | 2026-06-28 |
| s2 | Entrust nShield hardware security modules “Comprehensive FIPS-certified HSM solutions for enterprise cryptographic security. ... ZF Friedrichshafen AG Secures Wireless Manufacturing with Entrust nShield HSMs” | official | 2026-06-28 |
| s3 | Entrust PKI software solutions “All-in-one software-based PKI appliance for simplified, scalable, and secure PKI management.” | official | 2026-06-28 |
| s4 | Entrust identity verification solutions “Onboard customers, employees, and contractors faster with AI-powered identity verification that returns results within seconds.” | official | 2026-06-28 |
| s5 | Entrust leadership team and CEO Tony Ball “Tony Ball is the Chief Executive Officer of Entrust ... Tony brings more than two decades of global leadership experience across identity, authentication, and security technologies. Since joining Entrust in 2016 ... Tony held senior executive roles at HID Global and Gemalto” | official | 2026-06-28 |
| s7 | Entrust completes Onfido acquisition “Entrust, a global leader in trusted payments, identities, and data security, today announced it completed its acquisition of Onfido, a global leader in identity verification.” | official | 2026-06-28 |
| s8 | Wikipedia: Entrust company overview and acquisition history “Entrust operated a publicly trusted certificate authority until selling its public certificate business to Sectigo in January 2025. Notable acquisitions include nCipher (2019), HyTrust (2021), WorldReach (2021), and Onfido (2024).” | research | 2026-06-28 |
| s9 | Google Online Security Blog: Entrust Certificate Distrust “Over the past several years, publicly disclosed incident reports highlighted a pattern of concerning behaviors by Entrust that fall short of the above expectations, and has eroded confidence in their competence, reliability, and integrity as a publicly-trusted CA Owner.” | press | 2026-06-28 |
| s10 | Infosecurity Magazine: Chrome Update Will Block Entrust Certificates by November 2024 “Chrome version 127 and higher will no longer trust new TLS server authentication certificates from Entrust and AffirmTrust. The move follows a series of reported compliance failures, unfulfilled improvement commitments and insufficient progress in addressing publicly disclosed incident reports.” | press | 2026-06-28 |
| s12 | TechCrunch: Entrust revenue and customer base at Onfido acquisition “it currently has "just under $1 billion" in revenue annually with about 10,000 customers, including governments, major banks around the world and large enterprises.” | press | 2026-06-28 |
| s13 | KuppingerCole Leadership Compass: Passwordless Authentication for Enterprises (Entrust Overall Leader) “The Overall Leaders (in alphabetical order) are 1Kosmos, Beyond Identity, Cisco, CyberArk, Entrust, HID, HYPR, IBM, Microsoft, Okta, OneSpan, Ping Identity, and Thales.” | research | 2026-06-28 |
| s14 | NIST CMVP: Entrust nShield validated cryptographic modules “5329 | Entrust Corporation | nShield 5s Hardware Security Module | Hardware | 06/15/2026” | research | 2026-06-28 |
| s15 | NVD CVE-2025-59702: Entrust nShield tamper-event falsification “Entrust nShield Connect XC, nShield 5c, and nShield HSMi through 13.6.11, or 13.7, allow a physically proximate attacker with elevated privileges to falsify tamper events by accessing internal components.” | research | 2026-06-28 |
| s16 | NIST: First three finalized post-quantum encryption standards (FIPS 203/204/205) “NIST has released a final set of encryption tools designed to withstand the attack of a quantum computer. ... NIST is encouraging computer system administrators to begin transitioning to the new standards as soon as possible.” | research | 2026-06-28 |
| s17 | CA/Browser Forum members list (Entrust as Certification Authority) “The CA/Browser Forum includes the following members: Certification Authorities ... DigiCert ... Entrust ... Sectigo” | regulatory | 2026-06-28 |
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