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Venafi Awarded Patent for Automated Encryption Key Management Operations
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
Patented Technology Automates Lifecycle Management of Certificates and Associated Systems
Salt Lake City, UT -- Venafi Inc., inventor of systems management for encryption, today announced that the United States Patent and Trademark Office has issued a patent for the company's unique methods of automating various encryption key management operations.
"Venafi sought IP protection around this aspect of our technology because we had seen the market need to manage encryption certificates issued by multiple certificate authorities running concurrently within the same organization," said Clay Epstein, Chief Information Officer, Venafi. "Being able to manage multiple certificate authorities in this way helps organizations improve operational efficiency, critical system uptime, data security and regulatory compliance."
The patent, #7,568,095, describes the ability for Venafi to perform the discovery and workflow-driven lifecycle management—over public or private networks—of certificates and encryption keys, and provision them down to the systems that use them. This is especially critical for organizations that run Venafi across security domains within their organizations and those that run Venafi completely outside of their organization as an externally hosted service.
The patented technologies are integrated into several Venafi products, including Venafi Encryption Director, an enterprise key management platform that centralizes and automates the management of encryption technologies used by many applications and systems across diverse operating systems and infrastructure environments—from the desktop to the datacenter.
Patent Details: #7,568,095, Method of Aggregating Multiple Certificate Authority Services
This patent describes how the Venafi management system automates the issuance, installation, renewal, detection and management of digital certificates in a secure network system with multiple certificate authority types and instances. Functions covered by the patent include:
- Key operations, including initiating private key and certificate signing request generation, key installation, key archival and key restoration
- Agent or agent-less certificate lifecycle management (managing certificate issuance, renewal and installation processes)
- Alerts and notifications to administrators
- Validation of proper installation
For more details on the patent and Venafi products, including the certificate authorities Venafi products manage, please visit www.venafi.com.
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.
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