Centrify focuses on Privileged Access Management, spins out IDaaS business as Idaptive

Tim Steinkopf, Chief Financial Officer, has been named CEO of Centrify effective January 1, 2019. During his seven years as CFO at Centrify, the company has evolved to become a global leader in Zero Trust Security solutions for Identity & Access Management, and he was named the 2016 CFO of the Year by Silicon Valley Business Journal. Danny Kibel, who currently leads development of Centrify’s IDaaS solutions as Vice President of Engineering and Operations, will assume the CEO role at Idaptive effective January 1, 2019. The executive leadership teams for both companies will be comprised of existing Centrify executives to take each business forward with consistency and ensure a seamless transition for customers.

“The more we looked at our business, the clearer it became that a huge opportunity existed to create two organizations that can each better focus on innovation, accelerate their respective roadmaps, and ensure customer success,” said Steinkopf. “Our new relationship with PE firm Thoma Bravo gives us the flexibility to execute this strategy and positions both companies for organic and inorganic growth to strengthen their market positions and offer even better PAM and IDaaS solutions, respectively, to secure the enterprise.”

Tom Kemp, who is transitioning out of the role of CEO as part of this evolution, co-founded Centrify 14 years ago and has led the company through a number of industry milestones, such as combining Enterprise Mobility Management (EMM) and Identity-as-a-Service (IDaaS) as a unified service and pioneering Privilege-as-a-Service. Kemp will transition to an active strategic advisory role.

“We saw a tremendous opportunity for both Centrify and Idaptive to drive core product focus in each of their respective markets, while continuing to fulfill the mission of Zero Trust and Next-Gen Access,” said A.J. Rohde, a partner at Thoma Bravo. “Customers will become the major beneficiaries by having two companies with distinct and already well-known leadership, capital for rapid expansion, and accelerated investments in product and support.  We share the companies’ collective vision for this, and we are very excited to be a part of it.”

Centrify Zero Trust Privilege

Centrify is redefining the legacy approach to Privileged Access Management by delivering cloud-architected Zero Trust Privilege to secure access to infrastructure, DevOps, cloud, containers, Big Data and other modern enterprise use cases. Organizations may consider approaching Privileged Access Management by solely implementing password vaults, but this is simply not enough for today’s modern threatscape. Centrify Zero Trust Privilege goes beyond password vaulting to help customers grant least privilege through Zero Trust Privilege, verifying who is requesting access, understanding the context of the request, and assessing the risk of the access environment. This approach minimizes the attack surface, improves audit and compliance visibility, and reduces risk, complexity and costs for the modern, hybrid enterprise.

“As traditional network perimeters dissolve, organizations must discard the old model of ‘trust but verify’ that relied on well-defined boundaries,” said Steinkopf. “Zero Trust mandates a ‘never trust, always verify, enforce least privilege’ approach to privileged access, from inside or outside the network. This model, which we call Zero Trust Privilege, will be Centrify’s singular focus, leveraging years of innovation and leadership to secure the ‘keys to the kingdom’ for our customers.”

Idaptive Next-Gen Access

Idaptive delivers Next-Gen Access, protecting organizations from data breaches through a Zero Trust approach. Organizations may consider approaching Zero Trust by implementing Single Sign-On (SSO), Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA), Enterprise Mobility Management (EMM), and User Behavior Analytics (UBA) from separate vendors, but disparate solutions leave security and performance gaps, and are difficult to integrate and maintain. Idaptive is better equipped to enable a Zero Trust approach to security, with advanced capabilities that intelligently determine the authenticity of a digital user and their device, govern access across an organization’s resources, and react when risky behavior is detected. With Idaptive, an organization’s security posture is not only bolstered, but end user experiences are improved making everyone more productive — all without sacrificing best-of-breed features.

“Companies require intelligent access platforms that not only verify users and validate devices, but constantly learn to make smarter, faster decisions about granting user access. Without intelligent access, companies risk poor security postures, data breaches and frustrated customers,” said Kibel. “At Idaptive, we’re building this platform we call “Next-Gen Access,” ushering in a new generation of access technology that not only protects companies, but also leads to improved customer satisfaction. We have built a talented team with proven technology and are looking forward to revealing more on our roadmap, use cases and success stories in the months to come.”