Machine identity protection development gets funding boost

Venafi has launched a machine identity protection development fund during its Machine Identity Protection Live virtual event that aims to provide insight and education on protecting machine identity.

The first $12.5m tranche of the fund provides developers with direct sponsorship from Venafi to help accelerate the delivery of comprehensive protection for all machine identities, which includes the cryptographic assets that enable and secure private communication between machines.

The fund will sponsor a range of developers, including consultants, systems integrators, fast-moving startups, Open Source developers and other cyber security suppliers.

Funded developers will create integrations that ensure every new machine identity is automatically updated in the Venafi Platform.

The launch comes just a week after mobile network operator O2’s 4G outage was caused by an expired digital certificate, and headset software firm Sennheiser addressing a vulnerability in a root certificate.

Venafi’s Machine Identity Protection Development Fund aims to address issues such as these directly, by building a community of funded developers to accelerate industry’s ability to protect machine identities, including hardware, software, platforms, containers, algorithms, apps and websites that are used by consumers and businesses on a daily basis.  

Unlike other funds, Venafi said it was not a referral programme to third parties like venture capitalists (VCs) or private equity partners. Instead, the fund provides direct sponsorship from Venafi to incentivise developers to build integrations that speed up the industry’s ability to protect all machine identities.

The fund will initially focus on integrations with DevOps tools and frameworks, cloud providers and data visualisation providers. At the same time, Venafi said it also wants to ensure future needs are met by building machine identity protection into new product development around such emerging technologies as code signing, blockchain, internet of things (IoT) and artificial intelligence/machine learning.

“The Machine Identity Protection Development Fund is the next logical step for cyber security,” said Kevin Bocek, vice-president of security strategy and threat intelligence for Venafi.

“While we spend over $8bn 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,” he said.