ORIX Growth Capital announced today that it has completed an investment in Venafi Inc., the industry pioneer and leading provider of machine identity protection. Venafi provides its Global 5000 enterprise customers the ability to orchestrate the complete life cycle of all machine identity types, including TLS/SSL and SSH keys, and code-signing certificates.
“Inactive, stolen or compromised digital credentials have become major enterprise security threats,” said Joel Gragg, Managing Director at ORIX Growth Capital. “Venafi makes it possible for organizations to identify every machine on their extended networks and on the internet, and then use this data to control and authorize machine-to-machine communications. Their market leadership is evidenced by their growth and impressive customer base, which includes 50 of the Fortune 200 companies as well as many of the most security-conscious organizations in the world.”
Just as usernames and passwords are used to identify people, keys and certificates are used to identify and authenticate machines. And like usernames and passwords, if keys and certificates are not properly secured and protected, attackers are able to infiltrate and compromise the devices and services that run our global economy.
To protect machine-to-machine communications, each machine must have a unique identity that is protected with the same rigor and precision used to protect the online identities of humans. Today, organizations spend over $7 billion protecting usernames and passwords for humans, but they spend almost nothing protecting machine identities.
“Machine identities are high-value targets for cyberattackers and malicious insiders but, despite their fundamental role in cybersecurity, they are one of the least understood and least protected parts of enterprise IT infrastructures,” said Jeff Hudson, CEO of Venafi. “The exponential growth of devices, applications, cloud workloads, virtual machines and containers is exposing organizations to new threats that aren’t addressed by existing security solutions. Venafi is uniquely focused on solutions that address these critical challenges while reducing cybersecurity risk and supporting regulatory, legal and operational requirements. We are delighted to have ORIX as a partner at our side supporting our growth.”
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