Why We Invested in Aembit
Over the years, one major trendline we have focused on is the breakdown of the traditional security perimeter. We have continued to ask what that will mean for the new kinds of security layers necessary to protect the enterprise once its physical boundaries have become obsolete and what opportunities will exist for entrepreneurs. A central response to this dramatic change is the demand for identity-first security (alongside the mantra, “identity is the new perimeter”). As such, we see the lens of identity as a rich area for innovation and context through which to solve serious security challenges.
Over the years, we have invested in various approaches to identify-first security, including early in our history with access management provider Ping Identity. More recently, we invested in Strivacity, which focuses on better customer identity and access management, and Semperis, which prevents, identifies, and remediates Active Directory-based attacks. We have also invested in Corsha, which has created an MFA-based verification process for API calls. We continue to look at many new companies innovating on identity-first security in novel ways.
Today we announce our latest investment in Aembit, which brings identity-first security to Workloads. Much like Okta and other user Identity simplified user access management, Aembit is now doing the same for workloads accessing databases, APIs, and other applications in the cloud. In so doing, Aembit lets enterprises stop managing secrets as a method of authentication and instead spend their time managing access – ensuring that appropriate, least privileged policies are in place. This change allows organizations to take a zero-trust approach to workload authentication, resulting in overall better security and easier management.
One of the most compelling details about the team behind Aembit is that they have been innovators in Identity-First Security for a long time. Founders David Goldschlag and Kevin Sapp solved many problems across the access management landscape before, including most recently when they sold their Zero Trust Network Access Company New Edge Labs to Netskope. In founding Aembit, they are not only solving what we see as the next frontier of access management challenge (e.g., workloads), but they are doing so from the context of developers and engineers, which they are – and so have an exceptionally high degree of practical understanding and empathy for the problem at hand. The current environment is an excellent time for David and Kevin to start another company as digital transformation accelerates and the need for this product becomes clearer.
Another unique and compelling element of the Aembit product that we find particularly impressive is that DevOps teams can get started with the product for free. The free forever tier of the product reflects the company’s commitment to helping DevOps teams accelerate secure application delivery and make it easy to do so.
We are pleased to join Ballistic Ventures in this round for our first investment together. We greatly respect the firm and all they are doing in the cybersecurity investment space. The Ten Eleven team is thrilled to embark on this journey with Aembit and will do everything possible to help the company succeed.
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