Venafi, Inc. is a privately held cybersecurity company that develops software to secure and protect cryptographic keys and digital certificates. Its enterprise key and certificate management and security products are certificate authority (CA) independent and manage security instruments such as Transport Layer Security (TLS) digital certificates and Secure Shell (SSH) keys. Venafi does not sell encryption and it is not a certificate authority.
Venafi reports a customer base of public- and private-sector entities, mostly Global 5000 organizations that operate in a variety of industries. Venafi is headquartered in Salt Lake City, Utah, and has offices in California and the United Kingdom.
History
Russell Thornton and Ben Hodson, both University of Washington graduates, cofounded Venafi's predecessor company in 1998 after recognizing that a consulting project they worked on had broader a commercial application. The cofounders incorporated the company as IMCentric in Washington State on October 26, 2000.
Seeking an infusion of angel capital, Hodson and Thornton moved the company to Utah where they were joined by Jayson Seegmiller. Hodson led engineering while Thornton and Seegmiller focused on business and operations. An application was filed to conduct business as IMCentric, Inc. in Orem, Utah on March 18, 2003. Thornton filed to change IMCentric's state of incorporation (home state) from Washington to Delaware on April 1, 2004.
In early 2005, the company changed its name from IMCentric to Venafi. It also changed its leadership from Thornton (president and chief executive officer) and Seegmiller (vice president, secretary, and treasurer) to Trell Rohovit (president and chief executive officer), William Clay Epstein (vice president), and Darren Denning (secretary). That year, the company also moved its headquarters to Sandy, Utah.
Jeff Hudson (current chief executive officer) replaced Rohovit in October 2010, and the company moved to Salt Lake City, UT in 2013.
Company name
Venafi is a made-up word created by combining two Latin roots—Vena (vein or root) and Fides (trust or faith). Venafi secures the root of trust—the encryption keys and certificates.
Industry affiliations
Venafi is a participating organization with the Payment Card Industry Security Standards Council (PCI SSC), which issues the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS). Venafi submitted Cryptographic Keys and Digital Certificate Security Guidelines as a Special Interest Group (SIG) topic for consideration as both a 2015 and 2016 PCI SSC SIG. The topic was selected as a finalist for both a 2015 SIG (1 of 7 finalists, not selected) and a 2016 SIG (1 of 5 finalists, not selected). Venafi is also a member of the Financial Services - Information Sharing and Analysis group (FS-ISAC).
In July 2012, Paul Turner, then Venafi's vice president of product and strategy, co-authored a National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Information Technology Laboratory (ITL) bulletin (“ITL Bulletin for July 2012: Preparing for and Responding to Certification Authority Compromise and Fraudulent Certificate Issuance”) that provides best practices-based information. In 2015, Turner teamed again with NIST to document best practices for "Security of Interactive and Automated Access Management Using Secure Shell (SSH).".