Manage Reputational Risk

Analyst Coverage

"Admittedly this is a complex topic, but the most important takeaway is this: the risk-based evaluation your company needs to make right now is not about your vulnerability to the Flame virus; it is about your vulnerability to MD5-signed certificates. If you are confident in knowing how many of these there are, and where they are, and what systems are potentially at risk as a result – well done." Full Report

"Organizations with roughly 200 or more documented X.509 certificates in use are high-risk candidates for unplanned expiry and having certificates that have been purchased but not deployed." Full Report

"To support the broader deployment of encryption, organizations with top performance have looked towards increased automation and centralized, heterogeneous approaches to key lifecycle management. Venafi is well-aligned with this Best-in-Class approach."

"Venafi's primary differentiator is its broad entity support for systems that utilize asymmetric keys and certificates. In addition, it implements flexible key lifecycle policies and administration functionality and automated discovery of keys and certificates in systems that support such activity."

"Venafi offers compelling advantages, such as being the early mover in this market, with proven deployments at marquee customers demonstrating its ability to scale and provide breadth of integration."

"When there are many hundreds of certificates from a variety of certificate authorities, the only ecumenical [universal], nonproprietary provider of a certificate management solution is Venafi. Other CA management systems are biased toward the particular CA by, for example, only supporting renewals from that specific CA." Full Report

"The emphasis on orchestration, in tandem with its scalability and interoperability, is tied to the evolution of Venafi's competitive landscape, and to the potential to frame its value in the context of risk management."

Inadequate key and certificate management damages organizational reputation

Encryption errors cripple competitive advantage

Companies invest heavily in their online presence to gain an edge over competitors. However, the best website design ceases to pay when, instead of the website, customers see a certificate error page. Several high-profile companies have recently experienced this embarrassing situation due to an expired or improperly installed certificate. According to a recent study, 43% of users who see an error stop using the website. Some might return later, but many switch to a competitor, perhaps permanently.

System outages weaken customer confidence

A user can choose to trust a website’s expired certificate, but many mission-critical applications do not permit this bypass. Instead the certificate issue causes the application to fail entirely, trigging a service outage. Imagine a financial institution that cannot accept transactions or a manufacturer that cannot run its assembly line–such outages are devastating for the company’s image.

Exposed encryption assets increase vulnerabilities to reputation-damaging audit failures and security breaches

Most administrators understand the importance of encryption for protecting the company from reputation-damaging security incidents. Unfortunately, many administrators undermine their own efforts by exposing encryption keys to compromise. A compromised key can lead directly an audit failure—or worse a high-profile data breach that leaves the company CEO struggling to reassure customers on the nightly news. Even an audit failure causes a loss of reputation as customers consider what might have happened.