Venafi has received $39 million in an additional funding round, led by QuestMark Partners and other new investors Intel Capital and Silver Lake Waterman.
The investment will accelerate development of the Venafi Trust Protection Platform, which secures cryptographic keys and digital certificates for large enterprises.
“Digital certificates and cryptographic keys are the foundation of Internet security and Venafi is the leading cybersecurity platform for securing them,” said Ben Schapiro, founder and partner of QuestMark Partners. “Venafi is highly unique and addresses a real blind spot that’s underappreciated by many enterprises and represents a huge IT security risk. With its unique products, strong leadership team, and sophisticated enterprise customer base, Venafi is perfectly positioned as the need to protect keys and certificates continues to grow.”
With a compromised, stolen, or forged key and certificate, attackers can impersonate, surveil, and monitor their targets’ websites, infrastructure, clouds, mobile devices and system administrators, and decrypt communications thought to be private. And when that happens, intellectual property is lost and reputation is damaged.
From online banking and mobile applications to the Internet of Things, everything IP-based relies upon a key and certificate to create a trusted connection. But the most significant vulnerabilities and breaches in the last 12 months, including Heartbleed and attacks on Sony Pictures, demonstrate how unsecured keys and certificates provide the trusted status cybercriminals need to go undetected for long periods and circumvent existing security controls.
“Cybercriminals continue to increase the frequency and sophistication of their attacks targeting organizations and their valuable assets,” said Raja Patel, vice president of Intel Security Group and general manager of its Network Security business unit. “Intel Capital believes Venafi, with its unique approach to automating the complex task of managing digital certificates and cryptographic keys, is transforming the way enterprises and government organizations distinguish between what is trusted and what is not. We are confident our investment will help Venafi to continue enhancing their offerings and help enterprises protect the integrity of their communications and data.”