Miss our coverage from Day 1? Head over here.
I don’t know about you, but it feels like the last couple of days at Machine Identity Security Summit 2024 raced by in a blur, with hundreds of us flocking to Boston to unpack the latest trends shaping machine identity security.
And our speakers certainly delivered, unbridled innovation on full display. It felt like the very atmosphere at the State Room crackled with both excitement and possibility, and it was a joy to see everyone gathered in front of that breathtaking Boston backdrop.
But you’re not here to listen to me go on about the skyline and the venue, gorgeous as they may have been. You’re here to know what went down onstage, and why we all must uplevel our approach from “machine identity management” to “machine identity security.” You also already know that that’s no small statement, coming from our team—who created the management category in the first place.
But more on that later. For now, let’s get started!
Multi-cloud, multi-mesh, multi-identity
Multi-cloud environments are the new norm in today’s brave new business world, facilitating greater innovation and agility. But adopting a multi-cloud infrastructure brings new challenges and complexities in identity management and interoperability—both with and without the service mesh.
These include but aren’t limited to identity silos, inconsistencies in identity types, secrets sprawl and leakage, secret zero risks and authentication complexities.
To navigate these challenges, and others, teams must:
- Comprehensively discover, monitor and automate identities and workloads in multi-cloud and cloud native environments
- Combine centralized governance and decentralized identity issuance through a runtime issuer featuring built-in trust validation and authentication
- Replace any self-signed, rogue CAs with approved, compliant PKI
Certificate self-service success
Aligning your certificate service to organizational hierarchy and policy controls is crucial to successful automation and self-service capabilities, not to mention security.
This alignment that goes beyond the tech stack—to people and processes, too—will only become more crucial as teams work to overcome scenarios like 90-day TLS certificates and quantum computing.
Overcoming quantum quandaries
Speaking of quantum computing, the Day 2 agenda featured multiple sessions about post-quantum readiness.
From modernizing your PKI with quantum-safe capabilities to planning for the quantum threat landscape and more, quantum is top of mind for many.
Let’s unpack both of those a bit more.
- PQC-enabled PKI: Legacy PKIs simply can’t keep up with modern business demands, and if your team is still using a 20-year-old PKI solution, you’re probably dealing with an intricate, ineffective and burdensome processthat could hinder PQC preparations. A modern approach, however, will enhance security, boost operational efficiency and save on costs related to PQC.
- Evolving quantum threats: With quantum computers poised to crack public-key encryption, there’s no shortage of things to prep for. From store now, decrypt later attacks to migrating to quantum-resistant cryptography, the most important step is determining what machine identities you’re using and where, so you can get a handle on automating and replacing them.
Crypto cryptids
Quantum may be the bogeyman right now, but a practical approach to managing your machine identities will prepare you for most than just post-quantum.
With the impending enforcement of 90-day TLS certificates, not to mention CA distrust events that can happen at any moment, your enterprise needs comprehensive visibility, automation and crypto-agility to find, revoke and replace certificates and keys in a snap.
Identity is the future of cybersecurity
No matter what challenges you’re facing—or anticipating for the future—a robust foundation of machine identity security can provide the control you need. Control that doesn’t just stop at orchestrating your enterprise’s overabundance of digital certificates and keys, but also safeguarding them from attackers who seek to use them to do harm, wreak havoc and undermine trust.
Our incredible lineup of speakers spent the last few days exploring this fact, and out of all those sessions, one sentiment repeatedly rose to the surface:
The future of cybersecurity will be—no, is already being—built on a foundation of identity.
And no team is better equipped to help redefine your defenses than Venafi, a CyberArk company.
With our sights fixed on the future, and our hearts dedicated to your success, we’re here to help you forge on.
Safely. Boldly. Fearlessly.