Machine identities are exploding across the Global 5000. As a result, attackers are looking to misuse machine identities and their capabilities every day. To counter these potential threats, machine identity management should be built in to more applications across the security infrastructure—especially DevOps, multi-cloud, mobile, threat protection and analytics.
Venafi is committed to enabling our customers protect their business-critical applications. In support of this effort, we have created a $12.5 million Machine Identity Management Development Fund. The Fund will sponsor the development of third-party integrations with the Venafi Platform, accelerating the expansion of the Venafi ecosystem.
Venafi created the Fund to accelerate the integration of machine identity intelligence into a wide range of machines in the enterprise and further enhance and expand the machine identity ecosystem. The Fund will allow developers, including consultancies, systems integrators, fast-moving startups, open source developers and cybersecurity vendors to apply for sponsorship. This sponsorship will allow recipients to build integrations that deliver greater visibility, intelligence and automation for Venafi customers across any technology that creates or consumes machine identities.
“Identity is the foundation of security,” notes Jeff Hudson, CEO of Venafi. “The cyber world is made up of machines, and all machines require identities for the cyber world to be secure. As a society, we understand the risks associated with human identity theft very well, and we spend over $8 billion per year protecting human identities. However, most organizations don’t yet understand the risks associated with machine identities and, as a result, spend almost nothing to protect them. This leaves our global digital economy at risk.”
Just as usernames and passwords are used to identify and authenticate humans, machine identities enable the trusted relationships between machines that control the flow of sensitive data. Because machine identities are poorly understood and often unprotected, they are subject to being exploited by cybercriminals. The Venafi Platform protects the machine identities whose underlying technology is cryptographic keys and digital certificates by providing unparalleled visibility, intelligence and automation.
Designed to rapidly accelerate machine identity management across the ecosystem, the Fund is part of a $100 million round of financing, led by TCV with additional participation from existing investors, QuestMark Partners and NextEquity Partners. “DevOps and IoT are driving growth in the number of machines thanks to cloud computing, virtualization, and the proliferation of connected devices,” notes Jake Reynolds, general partner at TCV. “Venafi is well-positioned to provide the machine identity management for all enterprise machines, and we look forward to supporting the Venafi team as they continue to scale in this rapidly expanding market.”
With machine identity management built in to more applications—especially DevOps, multi-cloud, mobile, threat protection, and analytics—Venafi customers will be better equipped to secure their organizations and reduce risk. Venafi customers will be able to take advantage of a growing ecosystem to protect more machine identities for applications that are important today as well as tomorrow. The Fund also helps future-proof Venafi customers’ machine identity management strategies.
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