Venafi acquires Jetstack, brings greater security to digital transformation

Venafi has announced it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Jetstack, a specialist in open source machine identity protection software for Kubernetes and cloud native ecosystems.

According to Venafi, this acquisition was designed to advance developer speed and enterprise security in order to better secure modern applications required by digital transformation.

Digital transformation has changed application development and deployment. Cloud native platforms are making it possible for organisations to take advantage of the cloud and shifted more power to developers, Venafi states.

In addition, there are more machines available across business units, clouds and continents, including Kubernetes clusters, cloud instances, service mesh and microservice APIs. Each one of these machines requires a unique identity to connect, communicate, and execute securely.

Venafi states developers are looking for the fastest, easiest and most agile ways to build with TLS, SSH, and code signing certificates, all of which serve as machine identities. Meanwhile, security teams using manual operations are struggling to keep up with new machines.

World Economic Forum head of Global Centre for Cybersecurity Troels Oerting says, "InfoSec teams are struggling to keep up with cloud-native application development teams. Developers are deciding how to use machine identities without understanding how they affect enterprise security.

"This shift has created a real tension between enterprise security teams and developer teams. We must find a way to keep modern applications secure without disrupting development teams focused on innovation.

This is the area that Venafi and Jetstack are targeting. Venafi's solutions protect TLS, SSH and code signing machine identities for security-conscious organisations and government agencies.

Jetstack supports and advises enterprises using Kubernetes in mission-critical infrastructure. Leveraging real-life, operational experience, Jetstack uses the Cert-manager open source community, which has many code contributors and downloads.

Cert-manager provides a way for developers to create, connect and consume certificates with Kubernetes and cloud native tools. It is used in production Kubernetes and OpenShift multi-cloud infrastructure by various businesses including banks, retailers, airlines, and media companies, powering consumer web and mobile applications.

Venafi and Jetstack have been working together over the last two years to develop next generation machine identity protection in Kubernetes, multi-cloud, service mesh and microservices ecosystems.

They have a shared vision of delivering machine identity protection to developers in modern, cloud native infrastructures, according to a statement.

Venafi CEO Jeff Hudson says, "In the race to virtualise everything, businesses need faster application innovation and better security; both are mandatory.

"Most people see these requirements as opposing forces, but we don't. We see a massive opportunity for innovation. This acquisition brings together two leaders who are already working together to accelerate the development process while simultaneously securing applications against attack, and there's a lot more to do.

"Our mutual customers are urgently asking for more help to solve this problem because they know that speed wins, as long as you don't crash.

Jetstack CTO and cofounder Matt Bates says, "At Jetstack we help customers realise the benefits of Kubernetes and cloud native infrastructure, and we see transformative results to businesses firsthand.

"We developed cert-manager to make it easy for developers to scale Kubernetes with consistent, secure, and declared-as-code machine identity protection. The project has been a huge hit with the community and has been adopted far beyond our expectations.

"Our team is thrilled to join Venafi so we can accelerate our plans to bring machine identity protection to the cloud native stack, grow the community and contribute to a wider range of projects across the ecosystem.

Jetstack CEO and cofounder Matt Barker says, "Nowadays, business success depends on how quickly you can respond to the market.

"This reality led us to re-think how software is built and Kubernetes has given us the ideal platform to work from. However, putting speed before security is risky. By joining Venafi, Jetstack will give our customers a chance to build fast while acting securely.