Venafi Chosen as SC Magazine 2009 Innovator – Debuts NEW "Simon the IT Dummy" Videos
Selected for its Innovative Approach to Encryption Management, Venafi Encryption Director is Recognized in the December 2009 Edition of SC Magazine, Which also Introduces Simon the IT Dummy to SC Magazine Readers
Salt Lake City, Utah – December 1, 2009 – Venafi, Inc., inventor of systems management for encryption, is featured in a special, year-end issue of SC Magazine as Innovator of the Year for its Venafi Encryption Director™ platform. The magazine also includes the first-ever print ad appearance of Simon the IT Dummy – the star of the company’s wildly successful viral video campaign.
"SC Magazine recognizes several of the strengths of our company and products, including our unique approach to enterprise key management," said Trell Rohovit, Venafi president & CEO. "As an integral component of the security infrastructure within some of the world’s most prestigious organizations, our customers are generally reluctant to speak publicly about their use of our products. This recognition as a 2009 Innovator, however, allows our product to speak for itself."
During 2009, Venafi released Venafi Encryption Director™ V.1, a comprehensive, enterprise–wide encryption management platform that centralizes and automates the management of encryption assets (including keys, certificates and application configurations) throughout the IT infrastructure, across diverse encryption systems, operating environments and applications. Built on an extensible architecture, the holistic approach to encryption management in Director delivers improved data security, critical system uptime, operational efficiency and compliance readiness.
The December 2009 issue of SC Magazine also marks the print debut of "Simon the IT Dummy," a viral video star introduced by Venafi at RSA Conference in 2009. Simon is a Dilbert-like character who represents the IT "everyman". His superiors force him to perform his work manually rather than embracing more efficient approaches, such as utilizing automation technologies. As a result, rather than devoting his energy to strategic and meaningful tasks, Simon is relegated to being no more than a cold body that management throws at its IT problems – sometimes literally.
Venafi is using Simon to show what can happen when organizations take a lackadaisical approach to encryption management. As the Simon saga unfolds, viewers will see the challenges organizations experience as they try to recover from unexpected certificate expirations. The series will also introduce common vulnerabilities Venafi has learned of while working with some of the most sophisticated organizations in the world, including:
- + Incomplete or non-existent certificate inventory and ownership reports.
- + Administrators using the same keystore password on multiple systems.
- + Administrators struggling to comply with corporate password rotation policies on keystores (e.g. change every 90 days) due to the number of systems that must have these credentials and the operational burden that such rotation would create.
- + Administrators with copies of private keys that can decrypt the data organizations are trying to protect.
- + Failure to rotate private keys when administrators move to a new department or leave the organization.
"As Venafi works to educate the industry on the problems we solve, we are discovering that Simon gives us a more entertaining and memorable medium for introducing important customer challenges to the IT community," said Jeff Allen, Venafi marketing VP. "Our industry is full of whitepapers and Flash tutorials that are only useful if the audience understands the problem space. The hapless humor of Simon the IT Dummy introduces real scenarios to our viewers, providing a context for our other content."
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About Venafi
Venafi invented systems management for encryption to help organizations simplify the management of encryption technologies across their diverse operating systems and infrastructure environments—from the desktop to the datacenter. Venafi products provide automated management of encryption assets, including discovery, monitoring, alerts, lifecycle management and automated application configuration. This helps organizations increase data security, reduce downtime and improve operational efficiency. Venafi solutions are used to manage mission-critical encryption systems at some of the world’s most prestigious organizations in industries, including financial services, insurance, high tech, telecommunications, government, airline, aerospace, healthcare, food services and retail. For more information, visit www.venafi.com.