We just finished an amazing two-day run at Machine Identity Management Summit 2023. Hundreds of thought leaders from the largest, most security conscious companies in the world gathered in Las Vegas and online to share insights and practical advice on moving safely into the future. We heard from leaders at Expedia, Financial Services Group, First Citizens Bank, OneAmerica, OneMain Financial, PNC, U.S. Bureau of Engraving and Printing, U.S. Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency, U.S. General Services Administration and U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. And we heard from our sponsors Accutive, BMC, Optiv and Websecure.
But on day two, the most exciting news was far and away focused on AI. Today, Venafi announced the availability of its latest ground-breaking innovation: Venafi Athena, which leverages the power of generative AI and machine learning to deliver the industry’s first intelligent machine identity management capabilities.
Venafi Athena is fast, intelligent and integrated. It helps make fast decisions and provides quick solutions, all in the context of the tasks that you're performing every day. It is intelligent and it makes complex tasks simple by breaking them into simple and easy to understand steps that can be executed quickly. And finally, it's fully integrated into the Venafi Control Plane experience as well as with Venafi’s connected ecosystem.
But now, let me tamper my AI enthusiasm for just a bit and get back to the Machine Identity Management Summit 2023. With all the collective brainpower in the meeting space and online, it’s only natural that you would overhear some pretty interesting tidbits about the challenges folks are facing and the solutions they are considering. Venafi Chief Marketing Officer, Sandeep Singh Kohli summed up the three things that were echoing in every hallway, in every session.
- Identity is the very foundation of security
- Both the volume and variety of machines are increasing, leading to increased complexity in managing them. And therefore, we know and understand that machine identity management is vital.
- For each machine identity type, you need to perform the machine identity management task of lifecycle, authentication, authorization and governance.
But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Before I move on to highlight interesting things that where overheard at the summit, let me share a few amazing, but admittedly self-serving quotes:
Why Venafi is awesome
“Venafi is the only machine identity management solution trusted to care for the world's most critical machine identities. You rely on Venafi to manage identities for machines that carry out vital functions, not only for your businesses, but for the safe and reliable operation of our world.”
“We don't just offer you a solution. We guarantee your success with our unparalleled modern Control Plane for Machine Identities and our expansive ecosystem and integration. Your success isn't just probable, it's assured.”
“Your company needs the speed, dependability, consistency and scalability that come through automation. Only Venafi has what you need to support the automation of every machine identity.”
“Your business relies on Venafi to perform our role every second of every minute of every day.”
Artificial intelligence and machine learning
“Never been a greater time to be alive, especially in America, because now routine, admin and clerical stuff can be done by a machine.”
“The future, as they say, belongs to those who prepare for it. There will be no AI future without machine identity management.”
“We have to stop unauthorized code. We have to know which large language models are approved to run, authenticate and authorize them always.”
“Attackers will do with AI what they're already doing today. They'll look to ransom or steal our AI or generative AI or machine learning models. They’ll look to corrupt those models, whether by trying to input bad data or in some way take over the operation of those machine learning models or generative AI. And they’ll look to tamper and modify the models that we are using in our businesses.”
“Machine identity management is the kill switch required for success in AI.”
Post quantum readiness
“Mainstream quantum computing isn’t that far off.”
“If you’re not able to rotate your keys, you can’t be ready for quantum.”
“Post quantum key management is classical key management. The questions are the same: do you know where your keys are located and do you know if they are being protected? If so, you’ve got a head start on quantum.”
“You need to understand how cryptography is made, dependencies you have, and then you need alerts and a response plan for when it goes bad.”
“While we are completely replacing the foundation of the internet for quantum computing, we still need to keep it going.”
The growing importance of cybersecurity
“The way CISOs interact with the board has really, really changed. They are finally getting the idea of how cyber and IT risk can impact business risk. Huge increase in board awareness, attention and liabilities.”
“We are a tech company because we’re in business. Every company that’s in business today is a tech company.”
“CISO is the chief blame officer for anything bad that happens in IT.”
The power of machine identity management
“Certificate management is not machine identity management. It’s nowhere near as big or strategic. Professionals with certificate lifecycle management in their job title make an average of 36% less than those with a machine identity management title.”
“One common behavior that futureproofs businesses: a maniacal focus on automation. It helps them respond faster to new business opportunities. It helps them respond faster to competitive threats. And it gives their teams more bandwidth to work on strategic projects.”
“Machines are becoming more and more important.”
“Only Venafi is trusted to protect the most critical systems in the world.”
“We can see the complexity that challenges you today. We can see one customer using 570 different certificate authorities connected to the Venafi Control Plane. We can see one customer who has already integrated 1.2 million applications. And we can see that one customer is making over 34 million API calls to the Venafi Control Plane to manage machine identities.”