Keyfactor - Experts & Thought Leaders

HID Global, a worldwide provider of trusted identity solutions, and Keyfactor, a provider of secure digital identity management solutions, announced a collaboration that will improve how organizations secure data and protect privacy. By adding HID IdenTrust digital certificates to the Keyfactor platform, the offering provides enterprise customers with a single convenient solution to meet today’s zero-trust security models and identity. Digital certificates are used as a foundational security layer within IT and PKI frameworks. Transport Layer Security (TLS)/Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) certificates establish an encrypted connection between a browser or user’s computer and a server or website to ensure data security, privacy and authenticity. Unprotected enrollment servers HID’s IdenTrust business offers the only bank-grade identity authentication system in the world Rising cyber risk has prompted further adoption of digital certificates as businesses work to strengthen their overall security posture and prevent downtime due to system misconfiguration or certificate exploit. “Misconfigured systems, unprotected enrollment servers such as Simple Certificate Enrollment Protocol (SCEP), or other weaknesses can be exploited by hackers or rogue users to obtain fraudulent certificates that enable system access or “imposter” certificates that represent other users with elevated access,” said Chris Hickman, Chief Security Officer at Keyfactor. Identity authentication system “Finding rogue user or device certificates and preventing administrator impersonation can only be achieved by gathering and inspecting every internal and external certificate within the organization’s PKI.” HID’s IdenTrust business offers the only bank-grade identity authentication system in the world, delivering a legally and technologically interoperable environment for authenticating and using identities in more than 175 countries. With a range of application specific identity-based digital certificate solutions and over 5.1 million certificates in active production reliably supporting 18 billion validations per year, IdenTrust is one of the world’s leading digital certification authority. Access Management Solutions The Keyfactor platform provides the visibility and control to efficiently track, renew, replace and manage certificates To manage the HID IdenTrust certificates, Keyfactor offers the most complete and scalable cloud-based platform for the enterprise. The Keyfactor platform provides the visibility and control to efficiently track, renew, replace and manage certificates across the enterprise through one easy to use interface. Certificate management can now be automated to avoid inconvenient and costly down-time due to expired certificates while reducing the associated compliance risks. “Today’s zero-trust environment highlights the need for securing and managing identities of users, machines and devices on a network,” noted Brad Jarvis, Vice President and Managing Director of the Identity & Access Management Solutions (IAMS) with HID Global. Digital identity management "The combination of HID IdenTrust digital certificates and the Keyfactor platform enables our enterprise customers to achieve frictionless management and deployment of digital certificates. Customers can use this combined solution to achieve greater control of their information security assets along with effective risk management.” “This solution delivers end-to-end, secure certificate management that empowers business leaders to manage the operational and security risks that growing digital identity adoption presents,” said Kevin von Keyserling, Chief Strategy Officer & Co-founder at Keyfactor. “HID Global and Keyfactor share a common vision to support customers as they implement and scale digital identity management across the enterprise. This solution brings that vision to life, meeting our customer’s PKI needs today, and as they scale.”

Keyfactor, a provider of secure digital identity management solutions, announced the acquisition of Spain-based Redtrust, a digital identity solutions company providing centralized certificate and digital signature management. “Like Keyfactor, Redtrust is fiercely committed to offering best-in-class identity management innovation to customers in industries where trust and reputation are a top priority,” said Jordan Rackie, CEO at Keyfactor. “This acquisition supports Keyfactor’s scale and global expansion efforts. We’re now able to address a broader number of use cases for our customers and appeal to a wider market, from the Global 2000 to small and midmarket businesses in North America and Europe.” Secures certificate lifecycle management Redtrust serves hundreds of customers operating in the banking, insurance, infrastructure and healthcare industriesIn January 2019, Keyfactor announced a $77 million growth funding round with Insight Partners, a global venture capital and private equity firm focused on high growth technology and software companies. The company has doubled its revenue year-over-year and now secures more than 500 million certificates for Fortune 2000 clients worldwide. Founded in 2009, Redtrust serves hundreds of customers operating in the banking, insurance, infrastructure and healthcare industries. Its patented platform secures and centralizes certificate lifecycle management, complementing Keyfactor’s end-to-end secure identity and code signing platform. “We found the perfect partner with Keyfactor, and I’m thrilled for Redtrust to reach this important company milestone,” said Daniel Rodriguez, CEO at Redtrust. “Together we have a shared vision for the future of trust, and an obsession with technical excellence and customer success. We’re now on an unstoppable mission to secure the digital identities for companies of all sizes, in any market.” Protecting certificates and identities We acquired the best company with the best technology to address these threats"“With the ongoing emergence of new technology trends like DevOps and IoT, the ability to protect certificates and identities has become increasingly critical,” said Garrett Bekker, Principal Analyst at 451 Research. “The purchase of Redtrust demonstrates Keyfactor’s ongoing commitment to provide customers around the world with a full range of certificate and key management services that both enhance security as well as keep up with ever-changing compliance requirements." “Pervasive cyber-threats that exploit common Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) vulnerabilities, digital certificates and unsecured code are on the rise due to digital transformation, IoT adoption and evolving DevOps environments,” said Kevin von Keyserling, Chief Strategy Officer & Co-founder at Keyfactor. “We acquired the best company with the best technology to address these threats. Full stop.”

Keyfactor, a provider of secure digital identity management solutions, announces the launch of Keyfactor Control 6. This newest release of the company’s flagship, end-to-end secure identity platform addresses scalability in connected device security. Keyfactor Control secures, authenticates and future-proofs IoT identity at every step of the device lifecycle, providing a scalable IoT security solution. “The threat landscape is changing – trends like IoMT are creating new security risks and attack vectors, particularly when it comes to connected healthcare,” says Ted Shorter, CTO and Co-Founder of Keyfactor. “Any data transmitted across a network represents digital identities of patients and connected hospital equipment. Protecting highly sensitive data like medical records calls for end-to-end encryption and digital signatures to secure and protect it from compromise.” Security Posture Of Devices Keyfactor Control embeds high-assurance secure device identity from manufacturing through deployment and operation According to Gartner Inc., a research and advisory firm, “the IoT brings significant IT capability to a healthcare delivery organization, but brings with it additional risks. These new IoT-based vulnerabilities are outside the normally understood boundaries of information security or cybersecurity when viewed from the IT perspective1.” “In terms of IoT devices, getting security ‘right’ must happen at design time,” says Shorter. “But it’s not all about devices – security has become a part of the larger equation and organizations need to consider the security posture of devices as an aspect of its overall effectiveness when making purchasing decisions.” Keyfactor Control embeds high-assurance secure device identity from manufacturing through deployment and operation. The platform’s capabilities include IoT security scalability, one-step Root of Trust (RoT) management and fully managed private PKI. Innovative Product Teams Key features include: Secure Code Signing – Turnkey firmware signing and verification implementation via Keyfactor Control SDK, which ensures genuine software installations. Centralized PKI Management – Enabling the ability to discover, monitor, issue and replace millions of certificates and keys in real-time. No More Shared Credentials – Allowing every device to generate its own unique cryptographic key securely, which never leave the device that generated them. Global Manufacturing Support – Automatically registering and securing all devices, regardless of where they’re manufactured. Device Encryption – Providing encryption on device and in transit, ensuring continuous device overlay. “As the number of connected devices continues to grow, continuously managing security across those devices becomes a tougher task,” says Kevin von Keyserling, CEO and Co-Founder of Keyfactor. “Keyfactor Control delivers just that – control over every connected device on the network. Critical security tasks that could take weeks can be done with the click of a button. Customers can disconnect compromised or suspicious devices and replace keys and trusted roots instantly, without disruption and in real-time. This is a game changer for innovative product teams needing a competitive edge.”

At an Oldsmar, Fla., water treatment facility on Feb. 5, an operator watched a computer screen as someone remotely accessed the system monitoring the water supply and increased the amount of sodium hydroxide from 100 parts per million to 11,100 parts per million. The chemical, also known as lye, is used in small concentrations to control acidity in the water. In larger concentrations, the compound is poisonous – the same corrosive chemical used to eat away at clogged drains. The impact of cybersecurity attacks The incident is the latest example of how cybersecurity attacks can translate into real-world, physical security consequences – even deadly ones.Cybersecurity attacks on small municipal water systems have been a concern among security professionals for years. The computer system was set up to allow remote access only to authorized users. The source of the unauthorized access is unknown. However, the attacker was only in the system for 3 to 5 minutes, and an operator corrected the concentration back to 100 parts per million soon after. It would have taken a day or more for contaminated water to enter the system. In the end, the city’s water supply was not affected. There were other safeguards in place that would have prevented contaminated water from entering the city’s water supply, which serves around 15,000 residents. The remote access used for the attack was disabled pending an investigation by the FBI, Secret Service and Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office. On Feb. 2, a compilation of breached usernames and passwords, known as COMB for “Compilation of Many Breaches,” was leaked online. COMB contains 3.2 billion unique email/password pairs. It was later discovered that the breach included the credentials for the Oldsmar water plant. Water plant attacks feared for years Cybersecurity attacks on small municipal water systems have been a concern among security professionals for years. Florida’s Sen. Marco Rubio tweeted that the attempt to poison the water supply should be treated as a “matter of national security.” “The incident at the Oldsmar water treatment plant is a reminder that our nation’s critical infrastructure is continually at risk; not only from nation-state attackers, but also from malicious actors with unknown motives and goals,” comments Mieng Lim, VP of Product Management at Digital Defense Inc., a provider of vulnerability management and threat assessment solutions.The attack on Oldsmar’s water treatment system shows how critical national infrastructure is increasingly becoming a target for hackers as organizations bring systems online “Our dependency on critical infrastructure – power grids, utilities, water supplies, communications, financial services, emergency services, etc. – on a daily basis emphasizes the need to ensure the systems are defended against any adversary,” Mieng Lim adds. “Proactive security measures are crucial to safeguard critical infrastructure systems when perimeter defenses have been compromised or circumvented. We have to get back to the basics – re-evaluate and rebuild security protections from the ground up.” "This event reinforces the increasing need to authenticate not only users, but the devices and machine identities that are authorized to connect to an organization's network,” adds Chris Hickman, Chief Security Officer at digital identity security vendor Keyfactor. “If your only line of protection is user authentication, it will be compromised. It's not necessarily about who connects to the system, but what that user can access once they're inside. "If the network could have authenticated the validity of the device connecting to the network, the connection would have failed because hackers rarely have possession of authorized devices. This and other cases of hijacked user credentials can be limited or mitigated if devices are issued strong, crypto-derived, unique credentials like a digital certificate. In this case, it looks like the network had trust in the user credential but not in the validity of the device itself. Unfortunately, this kind of scenario is what can happen when zero trust is your end state, not your beginning point." “The attack on Oldsmar’s water treatment system shows how critical national infrastructure is increasingly becoming a target for hackers as organizations bring systems online for the first time as part of digital transformation projects,” says Gareth Williams, Vice President - Secure Communications & Information Systems, Thales UK. “While the move towards greater automation and connected switches and control systems brings unprecedented opportunities, it is not without risk, as anything that is brought online immediately becomes a target to be hacked.” Operational technology to mitigate attacks Williams advises organizations to approach Operational Technology as its own entity and put in place procedures that mitigate against the impact of an attack that could ultimately cost lives. This means understanding what is connected, who has access to it and what else might be at risk should that system be compromised, he says. “Once that is established, they can secure access through protocols like access management and fail-safe systems.”  “The cyberattack against the water supply in Oldsmar should come as a wakeup call,” says Saryu Nayyar, CEO, Gurucul.  “Cybersecurity professionals have been talking about infrastructure vulnerabilities for years, detailing the potential for attacks like this, and this is a near perfect example of what we have been warning about,” she says.  Although this attack was not successful, there is little doubt a skilled attacker could execute a similar infrastructure attack with more destructive results, says Nayyar. Organizations tasked with operating and protecting critical public infrastructure must assume the worst and take more serious measures to protect their environments, she advises. Fortunately, there were backup systems in place in Oldsmar. What could have been a tragedy instead became a cautionary tale. Both physical security and cybersecurity professionals should pay attention.