Venafi®, the inventor and leading provider of machine identity management, today announced that it has been listed as a Sample Vendor in the Machine Identity Management category for the Gartner Hype Cycle for Identity and Access Management Technologies, 2020 report. Gartner’s “Hype Cycle” is a series of reports that analyze common patterns when new technologies or innovations are adopted, enabling IT decision-makers to track technology maturity and future potential.
“Enterprise-wide machine identity management strategy is needed to support digital transformation in modern IT environments. As environments become more digital and cloud-enabled, security leaders will need to ensure that they can manage the increase in volume and velocity of machine identities that will be required to support their digital business needs,” the Gartner report states.
“Our society revolves around machines, and as digital transformation programs accelerate, our reliance on machines is growing exponentially,” said Jeff Hudson, CEO of Venafi. “Because every critical business application requires a machine identity, your organization must have a comprehensive machine identity management strategy. If you don’t, you are at risk. Venafi invented this category and holds more than 30 patents in this space, so we are very pleased to see Gartner recognize this rapidly growing market. We believe Venafi is uniquely positioned to create a world where all machine identities are managed and protected.”
Machines—from physical devices to containers and algorithms—control the flow of sensitive data. They shape innovation and are fundamental to the way all businesses operate. As a result, the way in which they connect and authorize communication makes them a primary security and operational risk for organizations. When compromised, machine identities become powerful tools for attackers, allowing them to hide malicious activity, evade security controls and steal a wide range of sensitive data. Cybercriminals routinely target machine identities in order to misuse their capabilities because they are often poorly understood and weakly protected.
As the inventor and leading provider of machine identity management, Venafi delivers innovative solutions for the world’s most demanding, security-conscious Global 5000 organizations and government agencies, including the top five U.S. health insurers; the top five U.S. airlines; the top four credit card issuers; three of the top four accounting and consulting firms; four of the top five U.S. retailers; and the top four banks in each of the following countries: the U.S., the U.K., Australia and South Africa.
Venafi is the leader in machine identity management for Kubernetes. Jetstack, a Venafi company, are the creators and maintainers of cert-manager, the leading, open-source machine identity management solution for Kubernetes which is downloaded millions of times per week. Venafi also offers numerous integrations for the HashiCorp ecosystem, natively supports Amazon AWS, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud, and operates the $12M Machine Identity Management Development Fund that offers direct sponsorship to developers who create new, innovative solutions for enterprise security and DevOps teams.
“The pandemic has accelerated digital transformation, and security teams are trying to keep up with the number of team members working remotely while, at the same time, support meeting the machine identity needs of fast moving DevOps teams,” said Kevin Bocek, vice president of security strategy and threat intelligence at Venafi. “These shifts are making it even tougher for enterprises to manage their machine identities effectively. Organizations need help navigating these radical changes. Venafi is the only solution provider with the operational experience to help organizations address all of these challenges.”
