With a new focus on COVID-19 coping strategies such as social distancing, working remotely and transitioning the digital marketplace, we’ve been forced to think long and hard about what is really essential. While the most important discussions revolve around health and wellbeing, the debate about what is essential can include everything from protecting our food chain to defending our economic welfare.
Despite a preponderance of opinions on what defines essential, there was one point that over a thousand Venafi customers and partners were united on last week at Venafi’s second annual Global Summit: managing machine identities is an essential component of accelerating our digital transformation. As a matter of fact, internet security tends to be one thing that many agree is essential—especially as we deepen our reliance on the internet and the machines that support our digital economy. Record-breaking registration for the Machine Identity Protection Virtual Global Summit 2020 further validated that importance.
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Why is machine identity management so critical? In the same way that humans rely on user names and passwords to identify themselves to machines, machines must also have a way to identify themselves to other machines. Machines use keys and certificates to verify their identities to enable secure connections and communications. As we transform rapidly into an increasingly digital world, managing and protecting the identities of these machines becomes increasingly critical to our economic success.
This point was underscored by guest speaker David Mahdi, Research Director in IT Leaders Systems, Security and Risk at Gartner, who posited the importance of positioning machine identity management as an essential service.
With peak attendance at his opening keynote address, Venafi CEO Jeff Hudson spoke about the challenges of COVID-19 to our industry and how we can prepare now for success after the pandemic. He also warned that now is not the time to ease up on critical protection for machine identities. The companies who can successfully manage their machine identities now will be in a much better position to rapidly pivot their businesses to embrace new digital strategies in the future. This speed and agility becomes even more important as businesses continue to transition to cloud native applications. To that end, Jeff announced in his keynote that Venafi would acquire Jetstack, a global leader in open source machine identity management software for Kubernetes and cloud native ecosystems.
Venafi has been collaborating with Jetstack for 2 years under the umbrella of the Machine Identity Management Development Fund. According to Jeff, the acquisition gives Venafi the chance to do something really special here as we combine resources and expertise to help developers build fast while keeping the organization secure. “This acquisition brings together two leaders who are already working together to accelerate the development process while simultaneously securing applications against attack, and there’s a lot more to do.”
Again, as we reflect on what’s essential in these uncertain times, it’s important that we find ways to contribute wherever needed. To that end, attendees were able to give back to their communities through their participation in the Global Summit. Venafi committed to donating meals to Feed America for designated activities throughout the virtual event. As a result of the amazing participation, Venafi was able to donate thousands of meals to those in need right now.
We also wanted express appreciation to our sponsoring partners of Machine Identity Protection Virtual Global Summit 2020 who helped make the Global Summit a success. Sponsors CyberArk, DigiCert, Entrust Datacard, F5, GlobalSign, HashiCorp, nCipher, PrimeKey and Thales are all among the leaders who are helping Venafi customers manage their machine identities across their critical infrastructures.
But most important of all are Venafi customers. Thanks to all of our amazing customers who joined the Machine Identity Protection Virtual Global Summit 2020 and helped to make it a valuable and memorable event. You are truly the warriors fighting to keep machine identities safe.
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