Cloud KMS to Drive 58% of Global Key Management Revenue by 2030, Fueling Cryptographic Service Growth Across Verticals

Mass migration to the cloud, accompanied by the proliferation of multi-cloud and hybridized enterprise ecosystems, has heightened demand for cloud-based Key Management Services (KMS). At the same time, the elasticity, modularity, and customizability of cloud-native and Key Management-as-a-Service (KMaaS) solutions has captured the interest of both large vendors and start-ups across industries. ABI Research, a global technology intelligence firm, forecasts Cloud KMS revenue to grow with a CAGR of 29.6% in between 2023 and 2030, revealing that 85% of new KMS customers opted for Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) deployment options in 2023 while 69% of cryptographic vendors plan to develop cloud KMS capabilities and cryptography-as-a-service solutions between 2025 and 2026.

“Enterprise infrastructures are becoming progressively more complex, with organizations increasingly relying on complex hybrid and multi-cloud environments, often in conjunction with containerized systems,” explains Aisling Dawson, Industry Analyst at ABI Research. “This increased complexity is sparking revolutionary change in how organizations manage and control their cryptographic keys; galvanizing demand for hybridized KMS and rendering cross-environment visibility and system scalability are chief priorities within the cryptographic services market. To support organizations’ burgeoning scalability needs, prominent KMS vendors are coupling centralized key visibility with decentralized, vault architectures for key storage, signaling a shift away from the traditional KMS model to keep pace with ever-evolving enterprise ecosystems.”

The demand for cloud KMS has opened the market to Cloud Service Providers (CSP) such as Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure, and Oracle Cloud to provide cloud KMS alongside their cloud services, equipped with security and cryptographic capabilities as well as offering diverse regional storage options to assist with customer conformity with data sovereignty regulation. At the same time, non-CSP solutions from market leaders like Thales, Utimaco, Entrust, and Fortanix offer interoperable KMS, which cut across various cloud environments and provide advanced automation capabilities that supplement and enhance CSP services. Customizable, all-in-one KMaaS packages, capable of consumption as a turnkey management stack, and cloud-based digital marketplaces that provide single-point access for as-a-service offerings are rising in popularity, offering lucrative opportunities for KMS vendors within the cloud-KMS sub-segment.

Perceptions of cloud-KMS as a more risk-laden option for cryptographic security have waned in recent years; however, more education and awareness raising on the value of cloud strategies in supporting and bolstering KMSs will be essential to continuing the upward trend in cloud KMS adoption. “Additionally, although integration of post-quantum cryptographic methods has been slow within the cloud-KMS space thus far, vendors offering granular visibility into customers’ key usage alongside critical security insights through quantum readiness assessments will have the upper hand within the market as the prospect of quantum computing advances,” Dawson concludes.

These findings are from ABI Research’s Key Management Services and Cloud Strategies report. This report is part of the company’s Quantum Safe Technologies research service, which includes research, data, and ABI Insights.