Okta makes AI identification play with Axiom acquisition
Identification expertise provider Okta is to amass Axiom Safety, a provider of privileged entry administration (PAM) for cloud, database, software-as-a-service (SaaS) and different essential assets, to strengthen its personal choices on this space.
The acquisition will see Axiom’s core expertise built-in into Okta Privileged Entry, which the client says will broaden entry controls throughout extra delicate assets in order that its clients can, in flip, strengthen their very own safety material.
Okta claimed privileged entry controls will kind a key defensive layer to mitigate dangers associated to synthetic intelligence (AI) as extra of its clients deliver AI initiatives into their workflows.
The provider believes that many organisations aren’t giving ample regard to those dangers. Its latest AI at work survey – which quizzed virtually 300 C-suite executives in 9 international locations, together with the UK – discovered that solely 10% of respondents had a “well-developed” technique for managing so-called non-human identities, or NHIs.
“In as we speak’s dynamic cloud surroundings, manually managing these permissions can rapidly develop into chaotic, resulting in vital safety dangers, compliance gaps and operational inefficiencies,” noticed Okta’s chief expertise officer (CTO) and head of engineering, Abhi Sawant.
“With the introduction of a typical NHI – AI brokers – into the enterprise, companies are struggling to make sure there may be nonetheless visibility, safety and governance for these distinctive privileged account varieties.
“Outdated or conventional PAM platforms that aren’t constructed with the flexibleness and neutrality wanted to handle permissions for the non-human workforce will result in larger safety dangers,” he added.
In keeping with Sawant, this is only one amongst many causes that enterprises ought to take into account deploying identification safety materials – that’s to say, architectures that may appropriately handle newfangled NHIs, in addition to extra conventional flesh-and-blood ones.
New performance
Within the coming months, Okta plans to introduce a number of Axiom-derived functionalities into its Privileged Entry service.
These will embrace unified controls to supply a single-point-of-admin for privileged entry throughout all privileged assets, whether or not on-premise or cloud-based, and just-in-time entry, a probably essential functionality that eliminates standing privileges and replaces them with time-limited entry, decreasing operational overhead and dangers by automating permissions for elevated entry in environments comparable to Amazon EKS, GitHub, PostgreSQL or Snowflake, to call however just a few.
On the identical time, Okta hopes to spin up AI-based software connector builder capabilities, exploiting AI to offer extra safety protection throughout environments, whereas additionally utilizing Axiom to increase safe entry capabilities to databases and Kubernetes.
Securing brokers a scorching matter
One other product of Israel’s booming safety growth ecosystem, Axiom was co-founded 4 years in the past by Itay Mesika and Ilan Dardik, who, like many cyber entrepreneurs, met throughout their army service. The agency has attracted round $10m in funding up to now couple of years, together with a $7m seed spherical in 2022.
Nonetheless working very a lot in its scaleup part, Axiom counts a number of software program corporations amongst its clients, together with company journey administration platform Navan, and a few cyber safety names, together with cloud safety specialists Orca Safety and Varonis.
The monetary phrases of the acquisition weren’t disclosed, however based on Israeli media reviews, the deal might worth Axiom someplace round $75m (£56m).
The deal comes scorching on the heels of Palo Alto Networks’ far bigger bid for CyberArk, which equally targeted on incorporating extra identification and PAM experience into the client’s safety platform with the intent of higher defending autonomous AI brokers.
