DATA SECURITY
Veza | July 20, 2022
Veza, the data security platform built on the power of authorization, announces today that the company has entered a partnership with Google Cloud, including product integration that enables Google Cloud customers to harness the capabilities of Veza’s data security platform across their multi-cloud ecosystem.
Veza, which recently launched in April 2022 after two years of building in stealth, makes it easy to understand, manage, and control who can and should take what action on what data. With this new integration, Google Cloud customers can now directly access the capabilities of Veza’s authorization-based data security platform integrated with Google Cloud Policy Analyzer to identify, manage, and control external identities and service accounts to Google Cloud services (Looker, BigQuery, and more). This partnership furthers the relationship between Google and Veza, which began in 2021 when GV led the Series B investment in Veza and GV Partner Karim Faris joined Veza Board of Directors.
“The cloud is quickly becoming the primary footprint for organizations. By prioritizing and investing in security, Google Cloud has earned a differentiated position in the market,” said Tarun Thakur, Co-founder and CEO, Veza. “The initial product integration between Veza and Google Cloud, publicly demonstrated at the Google Cloud Security Summit in May this year, is a powerful example of how intelligence from Veza’s Authorization Graph can bolster the data security of Google Cloud customers. It shows how identity-to-data relationship insights from the Veza platform can be pulled directly into the Google Cloud Policy Analyzer, allowing customers to secure both Google Cloud data (Looker, BigQuery, Google Storage Buckets, etc.) to which multi-cloud identities (AD, Azure AD, Okta, etc.) have permissions and multi-cloud data (AWS, Snowflake, etc.) that is being accessed by Google Cloud identities.”
“Securing cloud environments and data from cybercrime and threats is a key priority of organizations across the globe. “With Veza’s platform now available alongside Google Cloud’s secure and global infrastructure, customers will be able to quickly deploy the solutions they need to better understand, control, and securely take action on their data across their multi-cloud environments.”
Sunil Potti, General Manager and Vice President, Cloud Security, Google Cloud
Veza’s data security platform aggregates identity information from humans, service accounts, and cloud IAM entities, and authorization data from apps and data systems, giving organizations a centralized, SaaS-based control plane to visualize, manage, and control data access controls through Veza’s Authorization Graph. Veza integrates with cloud identity providers, SaaS and custom apps, and data systems, and translates system-specific entitlements and permissions into a common, human-understandable business language, visualized in the platform as effective permissions. The platform brings a novel approach to data security by enabling organizations to address key data security use cases across access reviews and certifications for SaaS apps and data systems, privileged access management to data and apps, data lake security and governance, management of cloud entitlements, and much more. It delivers prioritized insights, provides access workflows, and actionable recommendations for remediation of over-privileged accounts, enabling security and IT teams to correct anomalies and right-size their organization’s permissions to protect against ransomware and other data breaches.
As organizations continue to adapt to the evolving demands of hybrid remote and in-office work, multi-cloud and hybrid-cloud environments — those with multiple providers of disparate data, app, compute, and infrastructure systems — are becoming the norm. According to the Flexera 2022 State of the Cloud Report, 89% of companies surveyed are multi-cloud, with only 2% operating in single private clouds and 9% in single public clouds. This trend is leading to a distributed web of data, relationships, and access points that are changing and difficult to track and secure.
Veza and Google Cloud already have a number of joint customers deployed across the industries of SaaS software, marketing technology, and media, including Vox Media.
“To support Vox Media’s growth and increasing M&A activity without compromising security, we need to ensure that across all of our brands, the right users have access only to the data they need access to, and that we have full visibility over what they can do with that data,” says Ateeb Ahmad, Senior Director, IT Infrastructure, Vox Media. With Veza and Google Cloud working together, we’ve been able to seamlessly manage access controls over our data for our largest merger to date, and tightly scope identity-to-data permissions even as our footprint with Google Cloud and other technologies grows.”
“The greatest gifts of the multi-cloud and the generational architectural shift of the modern data systems are also its greatest risks: securing data, scalability, flexibility, and seamless collaboration,” says Thakur. “When organizations enable workers to reach from one cloud to another to leverage data across their entire multi-cloud ecosystem, they foster growth, enable more intelligence, and promote agility. However, such apps and data systems are also more porous and are at increased risk of cybercrime and ransomware. We purpose-built Veza’s Core Authorization Platform for the multi-cloud so that organizations can implement strong access governance policies - Veza continuously evaluates these policies and enables both automated workflows for access reviews, automated access removal for toxic and stale combinations, and facilitates access grant and request for any app, data, and service.”
About Veza
Veza is the data security platform built on the power of authorization. Our platform is purpose-built for hybrid multi-cloud environments to help you use and share your data safely. Veza makes it easy to understand, manage, and control who can and should take what action on what data. We organize authorization metadata across identity providers, data systems, cloud service providers, and SaaS applications — all to address the toughest data security challenges of the modern era. Founded in 2020, the company is funded by top-tier investors including Accel, Bain Capital, Ballistic Ventures, Blackstone, GV, Norwest Venture Partners, and True Ventures
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DATA SECURITY
Imperva | July 27, 2022
Imperva, Inc., a comprehensive digital security leader, announces that its award-winning Imperva Data Security Fabric (DSF) now provides data-centric protection and compliance for enterprise data lakes built on Amazon Web Services (AWS). Imperva reinforces its commitment to securing data and all paths to it by allowing AWS customers to secure their data with one comprehensive platform, leveraging a unified security model across Amazon Aurora, Amazon Redshift, Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS), Amazon DynamoDB, Amazon Athena, and AWS CloudFormation without requiring any changes to their existing data infrastructure.
Many security teams have gaps in their resources and domain expertise required to ensure their data lake meets organizational compliance and security policies. In particular, organizations must be able to simultaneously identify when a compromised user accesses sensitive data, while also preventing data from being stolen by malicious insiders. These gaps can mean that organizations must choose between limiting the data they store in a data lake, and putting themselves at risk of non-compliance, or in the worst-case scenario, a data breach.
Many security teams have gaps in their resources and domain expertise required to ensure their data lake meets organizational compliance and security policies. In particular, organizations must be able to simultaneously identify when a compromised user accesses sensitive data, while also preventing data from being stolen by malicious insiders. These gaps can mean that organizations must choose between limiting the data they store in a data lake, and putting themselves at risk of non-compliance, or in the worst-case scenario, a data breach.
Imperva DSF includes User Entity Behavior Analytics (UEBA) models that can identify suspicious data access patterns, such as excessive access to sensitive records, the use of privileged service accounts by interactive users, and suspicious network connections. This helps organizations automatically identify and detect potential data breaches without the need for specialized data security analysts. Finally, with Imperva DSF, security operations teams can create playbooks to automatically mitigate threats using native AWS features like security groups or revoking user access using AWS IAM. This ensures organizations stay in compliance while also helping to prevent data breaches.
Comprehensive Data Security
From one holistic dashboard, Imperva DSF delivers a broad range of data security capabilities – including data discovery, classification, monitoring, access control, risk analytics, compliance management, security automation, threat detection, and audit reporting. This makes it easier for customers to protect the migration of sensitive data, including Personally Identifiable Information (PII) like customer names, email addresses, phone numbers, and gender, and adhere to privacy regulations, such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI-DSS), and the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA).
Tens of thousands of organizations build data lakes on AWS and configure AWS Lake Formation, AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM), and Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) policies to secure access to them. Imperva DSF leverages services like AWS Lake Formation and AWS Glue to discover data lakes, monitor how users query and access stored data, and detect and prevent malicious user access and data leakage incidents. Imperva DSF also safeguards critical data workloads across all of their databases, file repositories, data warehouses, multicloud, and data lake environments.
Imperva Data Security Fabric can be deployed directly in any AWS Regions using pre-built AWS CloudFormation templates. Once deployed, Imperva DSF will begin discovering and monitoring data lakes. More than 400 pre-defined vulnerability assessment tests are available for cloud databases on AWS. Also, Imperva DSF takes the complexity out of deciding which baselines to establish by including policies based on Center for Internet Security (CIS) and Defense Information System Agency’s (DISA) Security Technical Implementation Guide (STIG) benchmarks that are adapted for the cloud.
"AWS allows organizations to quickly and securely build solutions that help them to reach new markets and deliver new services to end users,” says Dan Neault, SVP and GM, Data Security, Imperva. “Imperva Data Security Fabric gives organizations building data lakes on AWS a streamlined experience for securing data, and confidence that their data lakes are in compliance.”
About Imperva DSF on AWS
The support of data lakes is the latest milestone in Imperva’s work with AWS. Imperva is an AWS Partner with the AWS Security Independent Software Vendor (ISV) Competency and Amazon RDS Ready Product validation. Imperva also participates in AWS Marketplace and AWS ISV Accelerate Program.
About Imperva
Imperva is the cybersecurity leader whose mission is to help organizations protect their data and all paths to it. Customers around the world trust Imperva to protect their applications, data and websites from cyber attacks. With an integrated approach combining edge, application security and data security, Imperva protects companies through all stages of their digital journey. Imperva Research Labs and our global intelligence community enable Imperva to stay ahead of the threat landscape and seamlessly integrate the latest security, privacy and compliance expertise into our solutions.
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PLATFORM SECURITY
Coro | July 28, 2022
Coro, the all-in-one cyber security platform for mid-market organizations, growing businesses, and lean IT teams, today announced the launch of its unique Incubiz program. This program is designed to help entrepreneurs build and grow a successful business in one of the hottest markets today - cyber security - with zero risk, upfront costs, or experience needed.
Incubiz will debut in Chicago, Illinois, the location of Coro’s newest U.S. office. Small businesses account for 99.6% of Illinois' private enterprise, making them a vital part of the state's economy. Additionally, Illinois is the 7th largest tech employer in the country, employing over 318 thousand people. According to Zoominfo, Chicago and the surrounding suburbs are home to about 219,000 small to mid sized businesses and more than 4,000 mid-market companies. It is also one of the hottest startup markets in the U.S. With more than six thousand technology companies and 378 startups founded in the city in the past five years, these companies are all vying for cybersecurity help, making Chicago the perfect hub for the next step in Coro’s growth.
Driven by a robust talent pipeline, the state of Illinois is on the way to achieving Tier-1 tech hub status. In 2021, it had the fourth largest increase in technology job postings, and only three states added more tech jobs than Illinois over the past decade. But with the state’s employment opportunities shifting away from manufacturing and toward service- and knowledge-based work, many medium-wage jobs have been eliminated and many workers do not have the skills or education to attain higher-wage employment. A recent Illinois Future of Work report found that there is a need to create “stronger on-ramps for high wage jobs” in the state, citing that not having a bachelor’s degree is holding many back from being considered for higher-earning positions. This is further polarizing the job market, given that only 35.5% of Illinois adults have a bachelor’s degree.
In support of the state’s drive to make higher-earning jobs available for more workers, to build off Chicago’s tech momentum, and to close the cyber security skills gap our nation is facing, Coro has created an innovative, one-of-a-kind program to provide job opportunities in one of the hottest markets today, without any prior cyber security experience or college education.
The Incubiz program is open to entrepreneurs looking to start a cyber security business, buy into a franchise, or start a managed service provider/managed security service provider (MSP/MSSP) that provides outsourced security monitoring and management. Incubiz provides the potential for employees to achieve higher earnings without the prerequisite of many similar job openings. Individuals accepted into Coro’s 18-month Incubiz program will be provided with the training, support, and infrastructure needed to build a valuable skill set and ultimately launch their own cyber security business. Not only are there no costs to participants, they will be paid a competitive salary as a Coro Authorized Security Consultant. Upon completion of the program, participants will be able to operate independently, but with access to continued support and residual income from any customers brought in during the incubation period.
“Coro’s mission is to continually innovate and develop the best cyber security tools possible. We’re excited to offer our expertise and resources to help the next generation of cyber entrepreneurs through our new Incubiz program. “The Illinois job market is at a crossroad, and this program is a great opportunity for workers to attain a higher-paying job without needing a predefined skillset or degree. Chicago is the perfect market to launch IncuBiz, and we are eager to add to the city’s flourishing tech scene and offer more equitable employment opportunities within the state.”
Jim Tarantino, Chief Revenue Officer at Coro
Coro developed its powerful cyber security platform to address the noticeable cyber security gaps in the mid-market and SMB segments, making enterprise-grade security accessible to any business at a fraction of the cost of other solutions. Coro is one of the fastest growing cyber security companies today and has seen significant momentum with 300% year-over-year growth for each of the past three years and into 2022. Earlier this year, Coro announced $80M in funding and a rapid expansion in the Chicago market.
About Coro
Coro is one of the fastest growing security solutions for the mid-market, providing all-in-one protection that empowers organizations to defend against malware, ransomware, phishing, and bots across devices, users, and cloud applications. More than 5,000 businesses depend on Coro for holistic security protection, unrivaled ease of use, and unmatched affordability. Built on the principle of non-disruptive security, the Coro platform employs innovative AI technology to identify and remediate the many security threats that today's distributed businesses face, without IT teams having to worry, investigate, or fix issues themselves. Investors in Coro include Balderton Capital, JVP, MizMaa Ventures, and Ashton Kutcher’s Sound Ventures.
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