Procyon raises $6.5M to provide multicloud access management for DevOps teams

Procyon Inc., a supplier of safe entry administration for multi-cloud enterprise infrastructure, mentioned at the moment that it has raised $6.5 million in funding towards launching its privileged entry administration platform that it says will reinvent how DevOps groups and builders entry cloud companies.

Foyer Capital led the funding spherical with participation from GTM Capital and First Rays Enterprise Companions.

Procyon co-founder and Chief Government Surkesh Halemane and Chief Enterprise Officer Arkash Agarwal informed SiliconANGLE that as multicloud environments turn out to be the norm, accessing them securely has turn out to be extra complicated and tough for builders. On the similar time, cybersecurity groups have been tightening their defenses as a result of many customers accessing cloud environments have the potential of compromising delicate info.

“One of many greatest worries is very privileged customers accessing the crown jewels getting compromised, and if you concentrate on it within the cloud each person who has entry to the database account is a privileged person,” mentioned Halemane. “A second drawback is that both builders are struggling to get entry to one thing, which means they’re sending e-mail or Slack messages and two days later they lastly get entry, or they’ve an excessive amount of entry, similar to they’ve too many privileges assigned.”

The Procyon Multi-Cloud Privilege Entry Administration platform offers an answer that enables builders fast entry to what they want, with sufficient privileges to do what they want and makes use of passwordless know-how.

On the developer entry finish, the platform removes passwords by benefiting from the Trusted Platform Module present in computing environments – similar to PCs, laptops and telephones — to authenticate units together with an identification administration supplier similar to Okta Inc.. Utilizing TPM, Procyon cryptographically binds to person identification and maps that to the sources they may entry.

The credential itself is safe and eliminates using password managers or vaults, thus eradicating something that may be simply stolen, the corporate says. For extra delicate roles, TPM can be mixed with biometrics on laptops and telephones similar to fingerprint readers and FaceID for even increased safety.

Information breaches will be expensive, with the typical value reaching $4.35 million in line with the 2022 cost of data breach report by IBM Corp. and Ponemon institute. Stolen or compromised credentials have been the most typical trigger of knowledge breaches and took the longest time to determine. Some breaches of huge corporations in 2022 occurred because of stolen credentials, such because the September hack of ride-sharing firm Uber Applied sciences Inc.

In conventional cloud methods, builders can have longstanding entry to cloud sources that present them privileges to delicate methods, generally in perpetuity. That makes them targets for social engineering assaults similar to phishing, when a hacker tries to trick a person into giving up their password or different credentials.

To forestall that, Procyon has a self-service portal the place builders can request entry to the precise sources that they want and the time that they want them for, they usually obtain entry through the passwordless system. Approval insurance policies will be configured by the safety workforce primarily based on any variety of components in line with compliance requirements, the useful resource, identification and approver. The entry can be set to run out after a sure period of time, which means that the privileges are short-term.

Within the business, this is called “zero standing privileges” together with “just-in-time entry,” which helps get rid of the probabilities that an attacker can get entry to over-privileged sources or person account.

“In olden methods, you’d be given a password and entry to those methods that you’d retain for some time frame, in lots of circumstances without end,” mentioned Agarwal. “And also you left the corporate and your e-mail is being disbanded and perhaps your entry to company, however we’re discovering that different entry that you simply shared over Slack nonetheless stays with you. Except the corporate has a super-comprehensive system to know who was given entry to what, they’ll’t revoke that. That’s what results in compromises and the sale of credentials on secondary markets.”

The self-service portal works with all the key cloud companies – Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure and Amazon Net Companies – and tracks all of the permissions and roles for the administration. If any of these roles are up to date on these companies, Procyon additionally updates them so enterprise workflows don’t break.

If one thing does go incorrect, for instance, an account or service is maliciously accessed, Procyon’s platform has a perform, dubbed the “kill swap,” that may immediately terminate periods, units and accounts from accessing the system. That’s made straightforward as a result of the platform sits between the developer and each service they work together with and has an ideal view of each authentication transaction and session, in line with the corporate. With the ever-increasing complexity of multicloud environments, the worth of Procyon for enterprise companies is turning into much more apparent, Agarwal defined.

“With companies with massive engineering groups can’t handle this,” mentioned Argwal. “They’ve full-time identification administration groups the place it’s somebody’s job to offer you identification and entry and that individual is simply overwhelmed attempting to handle it. If you concentrate on it, Procyon’s worth proposition turns into compelling as a result of we give that individual automation. We give your entire DevOps workforce automation to handle privileges and get rid of potential compromises with what we do.”

Picture: estherpoon/Adobe Inventory