Venafi®, the leading provider of machine identity protection announced the results of a study of how retail organizations manage and implement Secure Shell (SSH). Over one hundred IT security professionals from the retail industry participated in the study, which reveals a widespread lack of SSH security controls.
According to Venafi’s research, even though SSH keys provide the highest levels of administrative access, they are routinely untracked, unmanaged and poorly secured. For example, eighty-one percent of respondents acknowledge they do not have a complete and accurate inventory of all SSH keys. If retailers do not know where and how they are managing their SSH keys, they cannot determine if any have been stolen, misused or should not be trusted.
“Retail companies rely on an assortment of connected machines that most other industries don’t use,” said Nick Hunter, senior digital trust researcher for Venafi. “These machines house lucrative financial information, which makes retailers, and their transactions, prime targets for cyber criminals. Simply put, retailers face unique and significant machine identity threats. To protect their customers and their critical business data, retailers need a strong SSH governance program that provides them with complete visibility of all their SSH keys.”
Venafi is the cyber security market leader in machine identity protection, securing all connections and communications between machines. Venafi protects machine identity types by orchestrating cryptographic keys and digital certificates for SSL/TLS, IoT, mobile and SSH. Venafi provides global visibility of machine identities and the risks associated with them for the extended enterprise —on premises, mobile, virtual, cloud and IoT — at machine speed and scale. Venafi puts this intelligence into action with automated remediation that reduces the security and availability risks connected with weak or compromised machine identities while safeguarding the flow of information to trusted machines and preventing communication with machines that are not trusted.
With over 30 patents, Venafi delivers innovative solutions for the world’s most demanding, security-conscious Global 5000 organizations, including the top five U.S. health insurers, the top five U.S. airlines, four of the top five U.S., U.K. and South African banks, and four of the top five U.S. retailers. For more information, visit: http://venafi.com.