Venafi Launches $12.5M Machine Identity Protection Development Fund

Jetstack, OpenCredo and Cygnacom funded at Machine Identity Protection
Live

SALT LAKE CITY–(BUSINESS WIRE)–lt;a href=”https://twitter.com/hashtag/CyberSecurity?src=hash” target=”_blank”gt;#CyberSecuritylt;/agt;–Venafi^®,
the inventor and leading provider of machine identity protection, today
announced the launch of the Machine Identity Protection Development Fund
at Machine
Identity Protection Live. The first $12.5 million tranche of the
fund provides developers with direct sponsorship from Venafi to help
accelerate the delivery of comprehensive protection for all machine
identities.

Venafi will use the Machine Identity Protection Development Fund to
sponsor a range of developers, including consultants, systems
integrators, fast-moving startups, open-source developers and other
cybersecurity vendors. Funded developers will create integrations that
ensure every new machine identity is automatically updated in the Venafi
Platform.

“The Machine Identity Protection Development Fund is the next logical
step for cybersecurity,” said Kevin Bocek, vice president of security
strategy and threat intelligence for Venafi. “While we spend over $8
billion protecting the identities of humans on our networks, we invest
very little in time, resources and money to safeguard the identities of
machines, especially those used in the cloud, in DevOps environments and
on IoT devices. As the volume, velocity, variety and volatility of
machines continue to increase, the need for comprehensive machine
identity protection grows exponentially. By providing developers with
direct sponsorship, Venafi is accelerating the rate at which these
complex problems are solved for the Global 5000 and, at the same time,
expanding their strong, thriving partner ecosystem.”

At Machine Identity Protection Live, Venafi also named the first three
developers to receive sponsorships:

• Jetstack, an open-source developer and innovator, helps organizations
  deploy Kubernetes at scale in production environments. The company
  will use the funds to make their cert-manager automation framework
  ready for production workloads with TLS machine identities that are
  delivered and secured by the Venafi Platform. This will allow DevOps
  teams that use Kubernetes to move quickly while security teams can
  rest assured that enterprise security policies for machine identities
  are being enforced. Using the power of the Venafi Platform, Jetstack
  will achieve another industry first: enabling security administrators
  to validate and audit the current state of certificates used in
  Kubernetes. This is something that cannot be accomplished by humans or
  traditional network scanners in dynamic microservices and
  containerized environments.
• OpenCredo, a software consultancy specializing in machine learning,
  cloud and DevOps applications, will use the funds to create the
  industry’s first open-source Kafka connector for SSH. The connector
  will leverage machine identity intelligence from the Venafi Platform
  to feed graph databases. This will enable organizations to identify
  SSH machine identity risks, vulnerabilities and anomalies in real time.
• Cygnacom is a global leader in developing and deploying public key
  infrastructure (PKI) and identity and access management for the
  world’s most security-conscious government and commercial
  organizations. Using the Venafi Adaptable Certificate Authority Driver
  interface, Cygnacom built its eConnector, which integrates Entrust
  Authority Security Manager for PKI with the Venafi Platform and is
  used in production by Venafi customers. Cygnacom will use the funds to
  extend its eConnector product line and automate the machine identity
  life cycle for IBM System Z mainframes running RACF CA.

The Machine Identity Protection Development Fund encourages recipients
to build integrations that deliver greater visibility, intelligence and
automation across any technology that creates or consumes machine
identities including:

• Cloud and hybrid cloud infrastructure
• DevOps
• Containerization
• Secure Shell (SSH)
• Code-signing
• Enterprise mobility management (EMM) and mobile device management (MDM)
• Artificial intelligence, machine learning and big data analytics
• IoT
• Blockchain distributed ledger technology

Bocek added: “This is not a referral program to venture capital
or private equity firms. Venafi is funding the program in an effort to
move the industry forward quickly and deliver solutions to the most
important security problems enterprises face today. The fund will help
future-proof machine identity protection, enabling a continuous pipeline
of new machine identity solutions that will reduce risks and protect the
Global 5000.”

To find out more about the Venafi Machine Identity Protection
Development Fund and how you can become a funded developer, please
visit: https://www.venafi.com/machine-identity-protection-fund

About Venafi

Venafi is the cyber security market leader in machine identity
protection, securing machine-to-machine connections and communications.
Venafi protects machine identity types by orchestrating cryptographic
keys and digital certificates for SSL/TLS, IoT, mobile and SSH. Venafi
provides global visibility of machine identities and the risks
associated with them for the extended enterprise – on premises, mobile,
virtual, cloud and IoT – at machine speed and scale. Venafi puts this
intelligence into action with automated remediation that reduces the
security and availability risks connected with weak or compromised
machine identities while safeguarding the flow of information to trusted
machines and preventing communication with machines that are not trusted.

With 31 patents currently in its portfolio, Venafi delivers innovative
solutions for the world’s most demanding, security-conscious Global 5000
organizations, including the top five U.S. health insurers; the top five
U.S. airlines; four of the top five U.S., U.K., Australian and South
African banks; and four of the top five U.S. retailers. Venafi is backed
by top-tier investors, including TCV, Foundation Capital, Intel Capital,
QuestMark Partners, Mercato Partners and NextEquity.

For more information visit: www.venafi.com.

Contacts

Venafi
Shelley Boose
shelley.boose@venafi.com
+1
408.398.6987

Spark Communications
Cathy O’Neill
venafi@sparkcomms.co.uk
+44
207 436 0420