Venafi launched a suite of groundbreaking innovations within its Control Plane for Machine Identities. Unveiled at the Machine Identity Management Summit 2023, these innovations expand Venafi's software-as-a-service (SaaS) machine identity management platform, equipping security and platform teams to accelerate modernization and safeguard their organizations against the challenges of cloud native adoption, the rise of AI, the post-quantum era and more.

The enhanced Venafi Control Plane introduces significant advancements, offering organizations a comprehensive solution to easily and securely manage machine identities of all kinds across any machine, any team and any environment - including lifecycle management, authentication, authorization and governance. New capabilities include:

• Venafi Quantum Protect - Venafi's new Quantum Protect shields against future quantum-related threats. The solution offers comprehensive expert services to guide organizations in transitioning to quantum-resistant cryptographic algorithms, addressing the evolving threats of quantum computing to ensure the security of machine identities, data and communication systems. To begin your quantum-readiness assessment, visit https://venafi.com/quantum-protect-readiness-evaluation/.

• Next-Generation Experience for TLS Protect for Kubernetes - Designed to manage cloud native machine identities such as TLS and SPIFFE across all of an enterprise's multi-cloud and multi-cluster Kubernetes environments, TLS Protect for Kubernetes is now fully integrated into the Venafi Control Plane. This provides security teams with a unified platform that allows them to more effectively observe security workflows, improve policy efficiencies and provide comprehensive reporting of all machine identities for Kubernetes environments. To get early preview access to TLS Protect for Kubernetes, visit https://venafi.com/try-venafi/tls-protect-for-kubernetes-preview/.

• Control Plane as a Service Availability in U.S. and EU Regions - Venafi's Control Plane as a Service is now delivered from both the U.S. and Europe. Its SaaS architecture is designed to ensure full feature parity and rapid innovation across regions. This new capability includes GDPR and data sovereignty compliance in European regions, offering the advantage of broader accessibility while maintaining stringent data privacy and compliance standards. To sign up for a free trial, visit https://venafi.com/try-venafi/tls-protect/.

• Dev Central - Venafi's Dev Central empowers developers by providing easy access to Venafi's REST APIs, user guides, samples and documentation all in one convenient location. This new hub enables developers to quickly and seamlessly engage with the Venafi Control Plane, bridging the gap between security and platform teams.

• Native Support for Public Clouds via Venafi Firefly - The latest release of Venafi Firefly, the only lightweight machine identity issuer supporting highly distributed, cloud native environments, enables VMs running in AWS (EC2), Azure and Google Cloud to exchange instance identity documents issued by the cloud provider for X.509 certificates issued by Venafi Firefly. By offering an alternative to JWT-based authentication, security teams can eliminate dependencies on OpenID Connect (OIDC) providers and credentials. To access a free trial, visit https://venafi.com/try-venafi/firefly/.

• VCert 5.1 - Venafi released version 5.1 of VCert CLI, an Apache 2.0 open source project based on the successful VCert SDK for Golang project. The newest updates to VCert provide seamless automation for system owners and administrators through a dynamic playbook feature that supports automated certificate installation, renewal and post-installation actions enabling TLS server and mTLS endpoint use cases. VCert now also supports certificate issuance from Venafi Firefly, allowing flexible integration across all TLS Protect solutions.

• Long Term Support for cert-manager - Venafi now offers long-term support for cert-manager, the popular open source cloud native solution designed to automate TLS and mTLS certificate issuance and renewal. This new capability encompasses a fully supported, signed and FIPS-compliant distribution of cert-manager to improve efficiency for Kubernetes platforms and enhanced workload security for DevOps teams. To learn more about the latest cert-manager release, visit https://cert-manager.io/docs/release-notes/release-notes-1.13/

"Organizations today are facing unparalleled challenges when it comes to navigating and managing machine identities," said Shivajee Samdarshi, chief product officer of Venafi. "These new capabilities within our platform help modern organizations address the evolving needs of complex cloud environments and post-quantum safety, reaffirming Venafi's leadership in the space with unrivaled innovation as the only true SaaS machine identity management platform."