Comprehensive Venafi Control Plane Helps Modern Organizations Address Complex Cloud Native and Post-Quantum Challenges

Venafi, the inventor of machine identity management, today launched a suite of groundbreaking innovations within its Control Plane for Machine Identities. Unveiled at the Machine Identity Management Summit 2023, these innovations expand Venafi's software-as-a-service (SaaS) machine identity management platform, equipping security and platform teams to accelerate modernization and safeguard their organizations against the challenges of cloud native adoption, the rise of AI, the post-quantum era and more.

The enhanced Venafi Control Plane introduces significant advancements, offering organizations a comprehensive solution to easily and securely manage machine identities of all kinds across any machine, any team and any environment – including lifecycle management, authentication, authorization and governance. New capabilities include:

• Venafi Quantum Protect – Venafi’s new Quantum Protect shields against future quantum-related threats. The solution offers comprehensive expert services to guide organizations in transitioning to quantum-resistant cryptographic algorithms, addressing the evolving threats of quantum computing to ensure the security of machine identities, data and communication systems. 

• Next-Generation Experience for TLS Protect for Kubernetes – Designed to manage cloud native machine identities such as TLS and SPIFFE across all of an enterprise’s multi-cloud and multi-cluster Kubernetes environments, TLS Protect for Kubernetes is now fully integrated into the Venafi Control Plane. This provides security teams with a unified platform that allows them to more effectively observe security workflows, improve policy efficiencies and provide comprehensive reporting of all machine identities for Kubernetes environments. 

• Control Plane as a Service Availability in U.S. and EU Regions – Venafi's Control Plane as a Service is now delivered from both the U.S. and Europe. Its SaaS architecture is designed to ensure full feature parity and rapid innovation across regions. This new capability includes GDPR and data sovereignty compliance in European regions, offering the advantage of broader accessibility while maintaining stringent data privacy and compliance standards. 

• Dev Central – Venafi's Dev Central empowers developers by providing easy access to Venafi’s REST APIs, user guides, samples and documentation all in one convenient location. This new hub enables developers to quickly and seamlessly engage with the Venafi Control Plane, bridging the gap between security and platform teams.

• Native Support for Public Clouds via Venafi Firefly – The latest release of Venafi Firefly, the only lightweight machine identity issuer supporting highly distributed, cloud native environments, enables VMs running in AWS (EC2), Azure and Google Cloud to exchange instance identity documents issued by the cloud provider for X.509 certificates issued by Venafi Firefly. By offering an alternative to JWT-based authentication, security teams can eliminate dependencies on OpenID Connect (OIDC) providers and credentials. 

• VCert 5.1 – Venafi released version 5.1 of VCert CLI, an Apache 2.0 open source project based on the successful VCert SDK for Golang project. The newest updates to VCert provide seamless automation for system owners and administrators through a dynamic playbook feature that supports automated certificate installation, renewal and post-installation actions enabling TLS server and mTLS endpoint use cases. VCert now also supports certificate issuance from Venafi Firefly, allowing flexible integration across all TLS Protect solutions.

• Long Term Support for cert-manager – Venafi now offers long-term support for cert-manager, the popular open source cloud native solution designed to automate TLS and mTLS certificate issuance and renewal. This new capability encompasses a fully supported, signed and FIPS-compliant distribution of cert-manager to improve efficiency for Kubernetes platforms and enhanced workload security for DevOps teams. 

“Organizations today are facing unparalleled challenges when it comes to navigating and managing machine identities,” said Shivajee Samdarshi, chief product officer of Venafi. “These new capabilities within our platform help modern organizations address the evolving needs of complex cloud environments and post-quantum safety, reaffirming Venafi’s leadership in the space with unrivaled innovation as the only true SaaS machine identity management platform.”

Zefr's global advertising partners can now further their responsible marketing goals on TikTok in collaboration with the platform's proprietary brand suitability solution, TikTok Inventory Filter.  Zefr is providing video-level signals to inform TikTok's industry-leading Inventory Filter for GARM Suitability optimizations, giving advertisers even further control and transparency when using the TikTok Inventory Filter on campaigns. This collaborative process represents an evolution in brand suitability optimization, a significant step forward from over-blocking content via legacy approaches, such as keyword blocking or static inclusion lists.

Since launching in 2022, Zefr has measured a 99%+ brand safety rate on TikTok based on the GARM floor definitions across global campaigns. Beyond brand safety, this collaboration will further improve advertiser trust in brand suitability, based on each GARM Brand Suitability standard definition. Zefr and TikTok will continue to collaborate on expanding these product features throughout 2023.

This first-to-market innovation is designed to simplify brand suitability optimization, without compromising scale. Zefr's global advertisers can select their preferred pre-bid settings with TikTok Inventory FIlter within TikTok Ads Manager, with Zefr's dashboard providing video-level transparency and reporting on ad adjacency, mapped to the GARM standards. If unsuitable content is identified by Zefr, that content is flagged to TikTok to continuously optimize brand suitability.

"We're excited to announce Zefr's Suitability Signals are globally available  in partnership with TIkTok's Inventory Filters. This innovation marks another important step forward in the industry, providing Zefr's global brands with transparency and optimization based on the GARM suitability standards," said Rich Raddon, Co-Founder & Co-CEO, Zefr.

"The continued innovation in brand suitability on TikTok reinforces Zefr's commitment to provide advertisers with a complete view of their brand suitability on platforms, mapped to the industry-standard GARM definitions. Zefr's Global advertisers can now access and action on their campaigns in all markets where TikTok Inventory Filter is currently available, with coverage across North America, Europe, Middle East, APAC and LATAM.

Opera GX, the browser for gamers, today announced that its number of monthly active users (MAU) has surpassed 25 million across desktop and mobile devices. This milestone highlights Opera GX's increasing adoption within the gaming community and its integral position within gaming culture.

"We are thrilled to announce this remarkable achievement of 25 million monthly active users, as Opera GX continues to prove its commitment to enhancing the browsing experience for gamers worldwide. With a passion for innovation and dedication to the gaming community, we look forward to sharing what the future holds," said Krystian Kolondra, Executive Vice President of Browsers and Gaming at Opera.

Since 2019, Opera GX has been dedicated to delivering a distinct browsing experience for gamers. Its aim was to address the challenge posed by resource-intensive browsers during gaming sessions while simultaneously offering a unique aesthetic and enhanced customizability that aligns perfectly with gamers' preferences. Today, Opera GX is at the forefront of innovative browsers, providing dynamic features like Aria, a free, cutting-edge generative AI service, solidifying it as a staple in the gaming environment.

Seizing the moment, Opera GX has taken advantage of its strong technology and platform capabilities to provide gamers with useful and entertaining tools, uniting a global community of passionate gamers and giving users a new and exciting way to browse the internet.

Timeplus open-source code is now available to developers under the Apache 2.0 License leveraging ClickHouse for historical OLAP analytics

Timeplus, creator of one of the industry's fastest and most powerful streaming analytics platforms, announced today that it has licensed its core engine, Proton, as open source for developers worldwide. Timeplus has developed an innovative, unified streaming + historical analytics platform, with its historical online analytical processing (OLAP) using ClickHouse. This means businesses can now seamlessly generate ad hoc reports over very large datasets, using both historical data and live streaming data. And they can accomplish this faster and at a lesser cost than with other streaming frameworks.

"Timeplus is a company built by engineers, for engineers," said Ting Wang, co-founder and CEO at Timeplus. "While developers have been thrilled with the simplicity and elegance of our product, many have asked us to go open source. We listened and are excited to license our software as open source and contribute code to ClickHouse that will benefit developers everywhere. Users will gain value from an amazing combination of best-in-class real-time OLAP analytics and powerful, lightweight stream processing."

Stream processing alone is not enough for analytics use cases. Solving root-cause problems in real time requires the ability to reference historical data to get the job done correctly. Leveraging Timeplus and ClickHouse code, developers can now natively and seamlessly connect historical data and analytics capabilities to solve complex real-time analytics use cases, like online and offline correlation, backfill, and back-testing. Users can easily run unified analytics to solve challenging analytic problems across a number of use cases, including financial services and IoT. And, users can accomplish this faster and cheaper than before. In production, customers' total cost of ownership with Timeplus was 10% that of using other streaming/real-time frameworks, all with one streaming SQL.

Purpose-built to tackle industry challenges, where real-time analytics make a difference
Timeplus is solving an incredibly difficult technical challenge: creating an elegant, easy-to-use unified streaming and historical analytics platform in a single binary. The unique combination of best-in-class real-time OLAP analytics (ClickHouse) with powerful, lightweight streaming processing and incremental analytics capabilities (Timeplus) will transform the way data engineers and analysts work. Over 250 Timeplus beta customers are using the Timeplus platform.

Many industries demand innovative approaches to continuous intelligence, like capital markets. From optimizing costs to support trading with reduced infrastructure, to detecting fraud in a changing economy, real-time processing has long been critical. Developers often faced a trilemma between speed, power, and openness: they could only choose two. Timeplus has combined the power of unified historical plus streaming queries with a low-latency engine - all through the open standard of SQL. By open-sourcing the core, developers across the industry can leverage Timeplus to contribute to an innovative platform for data analytics in the era of real-time streaming. The Timeplus streaming-SQL and real-time analysis capabilities allow developers worldwide to take part in revolutionizing how organizations across industries create competitive advantage.

"In today's rapidly changing markets, businesses must go real-time or become obsolete," said Ms. Ling Wang, head of the information technology department of Huatai Securities, a Global Fortune 1000 company. "Timeplus fills a major gap in the market. It combines ease of use, SQL that supports streaming, and speed. It makes extracting insights from streaming data even easier, saving us from writing thousands of lines of code and hundreds of hours of development. The ability to monitor and analyze massive amounts of real-time investment data leads to greater risk control and cost analysis."

Timeplus launched in March 2022. The company has secured $9M in funding to date, from leading global investors such as Hillhouse Capital and angel investors including Jeremy Kranz, founder Sentinel Capital; Rory Sexton, former SVP of Supply Chain at Apple; and Richard Tibbetts, founder of StreamBase and a streaming industry pioneer.

Consumers Are Shopping Earlier; Desire for a Return to Normalcy Fueling Double Digit In-Store Shopping Growth; 1 in 2 Consumers Now Cord-Cutters / Cord-Nevers

Samba TV today announced key findings from its 2022 Holiday Report conducted in tandem with global research firm HarrisX. The survey of more than 2,500 U.S. adults who plan to shop for the holidays offers the first consumer-focused research of the holiday season detailing insights into shifting shopping preferences and significant challenges for advertisers seeking to engage shoppers this holiday season.

“Consumers are in the midst of a multi-year evolution transforming both how they shop and how they consume content,” said Samba TV Co-Founder & CEO Ashwin Navin. “Mix in a complex economic outlook and the most fragmented consumer engagement landscape in history, and we are on par to see one of the most unique holiday shopping seasons in recent memory. With Americans continuing to embrace a ‘return to normalcy’, retailers will see trends like a return to in-person shopping emerge fueling the holiday season with overall spending behaviors on par with previous years,” Navin said.

Key findings from Samba TV’s 2022 Holiday Report:

Mixed Economic Outlook Creating Uncertainty, But Not Yet Dampening Consumer Holiday Spending

• 3 in 4 U.S. adults (74%) plan to spend the same or more money this year on holiday shopping as they did last year.
• The average adult plans to spend $1,041 this holiday season.
• 83% of millennials plan to spend the same or more money this year on holiday shopping.
• However, due to inflation and the rising price of goods, almost half of consumers (47%) say they might actually pare down holiday shopping and purchase fewer gifts.

Dritan Nesho, CEO of HarrisX, added, “Take note of younger consumers this holiday season. Gen Zers are planning to splurge on their significant others spending more than $100 more than the typical U.S. adult. Gen Zers are also planning to lean into electronics in a big way, leading in smartphone, tablet and PC purchases.”

“Return to Normalcy” Fuels Return to Retail and Earlier Shopping

• 31% of U.S. adults plan to do most or all of their shopping in-store this holiday season – a significant increase from years past. More than 1 in 4 (28%) plan to increase in-store shopping this year compared to last year.
• Just 24% now plan to do all or most of their shopping online. This is a shift from the past few years where COVID-19 concerns fueled a strong shift away from in-story to online.
• In-store shoppers are planning to spend more than online shoppers, with the average person planning to do the majority of their holiday shopping in-store expecting to spend $1,286 this holiday season and the average majority online shopper planning to spend $853.
• 1 in 5 adults (21%) reported starting their holiday shopping before Labor Day. Parents are leading the early shopping charge with 1 in 4 (25%) starting before September.

“Consumers are balancing economic concerns with a deep desire for a return to normalcy this holiday season. Because nothing signals a return to holiday norms for many better than grabbing a pumpkin spice latte while shopping the gift aisles of the local mall this year, we expect to see a measurable increase of in-store purchasing compared to last year,” continued Samba TV’s Navin.

Fragmented Media Landscape More Complex Than Ever for Marketers to Navigate

• The 2022 Holiday Report finds that less than half of U.S. adults have a traditional linear TV subscription (48%). With more than half of all consumers now totally unreachable by traditional television campaigns, advertisers will need to lean into new methods to reach a majority of holiday shoppers this year.
• The shift to streaming has become nearly universal with new technologies such as voice assistants and direct from TV purchasing emerging as trends to watch this year, particularly among younger generations. 21% of millennials reported making purchases directly through their TV and 1 in 3 (34%) have clicked a QR code from a TV commercial to make a purchase.
• More than 1 in 3 (38%) of U.S. adults report shopping online while watching streaming content, highlighting the need for smart cross screen connected campaigns to reach consumers across every screen. Moms are the ultimate multitaskers recording the highest online shop while streaming numbers (43%).

Navin concluded, “Brands and advertisers are navigating the most fragmented consumer landscape we have ever seen. Half of U.S. adults report that they no longer have access to a linear television subscription. These shoppers are poised to spend hundreds of billions of dollars on holiday gifts and yet will be completely unreachable by any traditional TV campaign but can be highly-engaged through other means. The shift to streaming has become ubiquitous across every age group with new technologies such as voice assistants and direct from TV purchasing emerging as trends to watch this year and into the future.”

Survey Methodology:

This survey was conducted online within the United States from August 29-September 1 among 2,505 adults by HarrisX (including 782 Millennials, 202 Gen Z, and 1,645 adults who are parents). The sampling margin of error of this poll is plus or minus 2.0 percentage points. The results reflect a nationally representative sample of U.S. adults. Results were weighted for age by gender, region, race/ethnicity, and income where necessary to align them with their actual proportions in the population.

Read and download the full report here.

Global leader in digital risk protection further extends depth and breadth of phishing coverage amid spike in malicious domains and cloaking

ZeroFox (Nasdaq: ZFOX), an enterprise software-as-a-service leader in external cybersecurity, today announced multiple anti-phishing product enhancements that further position the company as the global leader in digital risk protection. Built on advanced AI/ML technologies and designed by an elite group of security experts, the new anti-phishing features will increase escalated alert volume, minimize false positives, and accelerate the time from threat submission to initial disruption and completed takedowns for all customers.

These new capabilities have never been more important as ZeroFox Intelligence has seen an increase in phishing attack volume and sophistication in the first half of 2023, observing a 30% increase in domain takedowns compared to the first half of 2022. New ZeroFox phishing trend research also notes an increase in cloaking techniques to avoid detection, as well as the use of emerging tactics such as SEO poisoning and phishing-as-a-service.

Complete and Continuous Protection Against Domain-based Threats
ZeroFox addresses phishing differently than both email security and traditional anti-phishing vendors by focusing on identifying, disrupting and taking down the domain(s) required to stand up a phishing campaign. By monitoring over 65 million domains daily, ZeroFox thwarts typosquats, homoglyphs, subdomain spoofs, and other malicious domain and URL threats before they reach your customers and impact business operations.

Boost your cybersecurity with our advanced domain protection capabilities, designed to deliver impactful business outcomes:

• Minimize Phishing Risks with Anti-Cloaking Capabilities: Go beyond traditional detection technology to uncover phishing attempts that would otherwise go unnoticed, reducing financial and reputational risk.
• Strengthen Compliance and Trust with SSL Monitoring: Ensure that only secure and verified certificates are in use. This minimizes the chances of unauthorized activities and certificate vulnerabilities, aligning with compliance requirements and bolstering customer trust.
• Protect Brand Identity with Favicon Search: Identify fraudulent use of your brand's favicon, helping to preserve your brand integrity and customer loyalty by preventing phishing attacks.
• Increase Operational Efficiency with Enhanced Subdomain Coverage: Enable a more comprehensive monitoring scope, leading to quicker identification and takedown of phishing sites, thus saving your security teams time and resources.
• Enhance User Experience with Weblog Monitoring: Analyze your web server logs to identify and eliminate fraudulent URLs. This ensures a safer, more reliable customer experience by mitigating the risk of users being redirected to malicious websites.

“ZeroFox has been detecting and disrupting phishing attacks for the last 10 years, constantly updating our solution to protect our customers from changing phishing techniques used by threat actors, including the widespread use of malicious subdomains and cloaking techniques,” said Mike Price, Chief Technology Officer. “The enhanced capabilities we’re announcing today represent our continued commitment to address the growing phishing challenge facing security teams – as phishing continues to evolve, ZeroFox will continue to be your trusted anti-phishing partner, protecting customers from the phishing techniques of today and tomorrow.”

ZeroFox’s newest anti-phishing capabilities extend the depth and breadth of its domain protection coverage to stop emergent and multi-channel phishing threats at the source.

New Survey Explores Key Challenges and Priorities for Agency Operations

A new survey from Kantata, the leading global supplier of purpose-build technology for professional services, found that 74% of agencies are shifting their priorities and business strategies in response to significant pressures faced amidst the economic downturn. The survey, created in partnership with Canam Research and Salesforce to better understand the state of agency operations, their key challenges, and priorities, found that agencies are struggling to acquire new clients and need to do more to deliver exceptional experiences to current clients, all while managing against leaner operating models.

Nearly 60% of agencies are struggling to bring in new business, with new client acquisition listed among the top challenges agencies are facing today. Of those who have made or intend to make changes to their business strategy because of economic factors, 94% report that those adjustments have been substantial. Half of respondents are increasing their focus on customer retention and half will prioritize the client experience in the next 6-12 months to improve performance and profitability. Additionally, almost half (46%) of respondents have expanded their portfolio of product and service options, 30% have revised their proposal process, 28% have revamped pricing and 28% have increased the use of automation.

“The demands on agency leaders aren't new or unusual, but economic uncertainty is prompting many to reconsider their business strategies to minimize the impact of external factors,” stated Kantata's CEO, Michael Speranza. “All professional service organizations, and especially agencies, rely on their employees' expertise and creativity to serve clients. Optimizing resource management to meet shifting market dynamics is more critical than ever to deliver exceptional client experiences both now and in the future.”

The most pervasive challenge behind new client acquisition is employee retention. What’s more, 42% shared that resource capacity planning and resource allocation is difficult. To optimize the employee experience and improve agency operations, 41% plan to invest in learning and development, and 46% plan to invest in software to streamline agency operations.

“Happy customers are not possible without happy employees who are engaged in their work and believe in the mission and vision of their business. To achieve both, agency leaders should seek solutions purpose-built for how their business operates, and include talent development, and centralized access to the data needed to efficiently deliver outcomes consistently,” added Speranza.

Almost 3/4 of respondents (72%) feel they could not be successful without the use of spreadsheets. Interestingly, 32% also acknowledge that one of the top challenges in their technology stack is too much manual effort because of spreadsheets. Other challenges leaders face with their current technology stacks related to agency operations and client work delivery include integration (35%), workflow management (30%) and data silos (26%).

“While spreadsheets have their uses they are not effective for resource or project management, client servicing, and business development. Solutions like Kantata can help transform how agencies operate, improving productivity for increased performance and profitability,” Speranza noted.

The Kantata Professional Services Cloud platform enables organizations to improve resource allocation and management, increase productivity, and deliver more accurate revenue forecasting. To learn more, request a demo of the Kantata Cloud here and download the State of Agency Operations Survey here.

Methodology:

51 professionals with job titles including, but not limited to, Account Director, Head of Strategic Planning, VP of Operations, Creative Director, Media Strategist, and Group Program Director. The focus of our research was mid-size and enterprise agencies, with respondents hailing from businesses like RPA, 9th Wonder, Publicis, Horizon Media, Iris Worldwide, GKV, and Infiniti Research.

Content Licensing Marketplace Democratizes Access to Images and Videos Through Rapid Discovery via AI-Powered Search

Catch+Release, the content licensing marketplace, today introduces a series of transformative features streamlining how great brands access relevant, fresh content from creators worldwide, who post online, everyday. New product capabilities include Collections, Licensing, and Managing of content assets across a variety of marketing campaigns and use-cases. At the forefront of this innovation is an industry-leading AI-powered search that delivers a new kind of discovery experience for creative teams, making it possible to deliver authentic, relevant content for successful campaigns. Catch+Release’s licensing features ensure creators and intellectual property holders are protected and compensated for their participation.

Beyond Custom Shoots + Stock: The Democratization of Imagery

Traditional stock libraries, known for providing a wide range of content across numerous media types, have traditionally favored staged imagery from a narrow set of creators. At the same time, a growing preference for natural, authentic visuals has emerged as everyday people share genuine moments via social media channels. Because consumers demand a more authentic experience that resonates with brands they like and trust, it demands marketing teams to look more broadly beyond only stock and custom production and integrate content from the Internet into all types of campaigns, which delivers a better return on marketing investments.

Reports highlight a growing demand for content that captures real-life moments. In a study by Stackla, it was showcased that 88% of consumers accord importance to authenticity when deciding which brands to endorse. Furthermore, a report by TINT shows that user-generated content is considered the most trustworthy, as it's created by people who are documenting firsthand experiences, original perspectives, and are sharing those assets online.

Rising Trends: Everyday Creators and Empowered Storytelling

The landscape of content creation is shifting dramatically. The ubiquity of smartphones with built-in high-resolution cameras has transformed everyday individuals into creators, capable of capturing stunning visuals that rival the quality of professional cameras. This democratization of content creation transcends influencers and professionals, giving rise to a wave of authenticity and quality that Catch+Release has harnessed to enable the world’s best brands to deliver award-winning campaigns that connect with customers and deliver a 5X ROI.

Empower Collaboration and Authenticity: New Features Unveiled

Catch+Release is at the vanguard of democratizing content licensing, and offers a potent alternative. By embracing the power of AI-powered search, Catch+Release equips brands, agencies, and creators to discover the most genuine and captivating content, sourced from social platforms like Instagram and TikTok. This groundbreaking set of capabilities is reshaping the content licensing landscape.

Catch+Release's latest features include:

• Collections: Curate Collaboratively, Inspire Creativity. Users self-create collections, collaborate with team-members to find the gems that fit the brief. Whether sourcing content from Catch+Release public galleries or search, teams assemble and curate shots that fit the need and budget. Easily invite colleagues to contribute, give feedback, and rate assets based on the Catch+Release licensability score to streamline content selection.
• Licensing: Intuitive License Usage Process. Automate licensing by specifying usage channels, geography, and timeframes. Catch+Release manages the creator verification, negotiation, and payment processing, plus compensates all IP owners and creators. Licenses are generated and stored in one place. Content buyers are protected through indemnification starting at $1M, and up to unlimited, depending on spend level.
• Management: Centralize and Reduce Risk. Assets are easy to manage with license-stage filters, giving users a centralized view from discovery to licensing and tracking including possible renewals. A dashboard view minimizes risk and reduces manual work as all licensed assets and usage details are centrally stored.

"With these groundbreaking features, Catch+Release isn't just changing the world of content licensing; we're orchestrating a major shift in how teams collaborate and deliver better content for better campaign results. Our marketplace brings brands together with creators, giving users the power and control to uncover, license, and distribute genuine content that resonates profoundly with audiences," said Jim McCollum, Head of Product & Engineering at Catch+Release. "With these game-changing features, we’re forging strong marketplace bonds between storytellers and creators.