Venafi launches Assessor – free software to find SSl Certificates and key Populations and Qualify risk

London, Feb 28, 2012Venafi Inc., the inventor of and leader in enterprise key and certificate management (EKCM) solutions, today announced the availability of Venafi Assessor. Assessor is a downloadable, easy-to-install, free software solution that scans an organisation ’s network to locate and analyse deployed digital certificates and the associated encryption keys. Assessor produces a series of reports that detail the security, operational and compliance risks derived from the data it collects. Additionally, Assessor provides remediation recommendations based on industry best practices and the aggregate experience of Venafi customers.

Organisations protect critical and often regulated information with certificates and keys, yet 70 percent of companies have inaccurate or incomplete data about their growing encryption populations according to a recent Venafi survey.  Recent Venafi Assessor analysis has found that organisations performing basic inventory assessments often discover three to five times more Secure Socket Layer (SSL) certificates than they expected to find on their network. As a result of these unknown and therefore unmanaged certificates, organisations are vulnerable to unplanned outages, security compromises and failed audits.

Leading IT research and analyst firm Gartner, Inc. recently indicated that organisations  with roughly 200 or more X.509 certificates are high-risk candidates for costly unplanned downtime and brand damage. In the X.509 Certificate Management: Avoiding Downtime and Brand Damage report, published Nov. 4 2011, Gartner analysts Eric Ouellet and Vic Wheatman write, “Organisations  are often unaware of the scope or the validity status of their X.509 certificate and key deployments until it is too late. Organisations  need to establish formalized plans and, if necessary, leverage available tools to minimize impacts.” Download the full report here.

“Having worked with many of the world’s largest companies, our experience is that enterprises have inaccurate and incomplete data about their certificate and key populations,” said Jeff Hudson, Venafi CEO. “The unquantified and unmanaged risks these security instruments pose are significant. The risks are increasing because certificates are being rapidly deployed within corporate data centers, on cloud-based systems, and onto mobile devices. With Assessor, organisations  can quantify the extent of their risks, turning assumptions about their certificates and encryption keys into hard data.  We are now providing this capability to organisations  at no cost.”

Request a copy of Venafi Assessor and view a sample Assessor risk profile report at www.venafi.com/Assessor.

About Venafi

Venafi is the inventor of and market leader in enterprise key and certificate management (EKCM) solutions. Venafi delivered the first enterprise–class solution to automate the provisioning, discovery, monitoring and management of digital certificates and encryption keys—from the datacenter to the cloud and beyond—built specifically for encryption management interoperability across heterogeneous environments. Venafi products reduce the unquantified and unmanaged risks associated with encryption deployments that result in data breaches, security audit failures and unplanned system outages. Venafi also publishes best practices for effective key and certificate management at www.venafi.com/best-practices. Venafi customers include the world’s most prestigious Global 2000 organisations  in financial services, insurance, high tech, telecommunications, aerospace, healthcare and retail industries. Venafi is backed by top–tier venture capital funds, including Foundation Capital, Pelion Venture Partners and Origin Partners. For more information, visit www.venafi.com.