Akeyless is redefining identity security for the modern enterprise, delivering the world’s first unified Secrets & Machine Identity platform designed to prevent the #1 cause of breaches – compromised identities and secrets. Pulse 2.0 interviewed Akeyless co-founder and CEO Oded Hareven to learn more about the company.
Oded Hareven’s Background
Could you tell me more about your background? Hareven said:
“I have a strong background in cybersecurity, which began during my service in the IDF’s elite Cybersecurity unit. This experience gave me firsthand exposure to the complexities of combating cybersecurity threats, particularly those related to Identity and Access Management technologies. After my military service, I transitioned to the private sector, where I held several senior roles in both enterprise organizations and startups.”
“At Moovit, which was later acquired by Intel, I served as Director of Product Management, driving innovation and growth in a fast-paced tech environment. Prior to that, as a Senior Project Manager at CA Technologies, I gained invaluable experience leading complex projects at scale. These roles not only sharpened my technical and leadership skills but also deepened my understanding of the challenges organizations face in securing their systems and data.”
Formation Of The Company
How did the idea for the company come together? Hareven shared:
“The idea for Akeyless was born from an innovative breakthrough by my co-founder and CTO, Refael Angel. He developed Distributed Fragments Cryptography (DFC), a unique encryption technology that splits cryptographic keys into separate fragments that are never combined. This approach enables an unparalleled level of security, particularly for cloud environments. Recognizing the transformative potential of this technology, Shai Onn joined as co-founder and chairman, and Shai brought me on in the role of CEO to help turn this vision into reality.”
“Early on, we identified a critical gap in the market. Organizations were relying heavily on open-source tools to protect their secrets and encryption keys. While functional, these tools required significant effort and expertise to deploy and manage, especially given the mission-critical nature of secrets management. This created a major challenge for businesses seeking both simplicity and robust security in their operations.”
“Using our unique technology to deliver secrets management as a SaaS solution was a breakthrough. It allowed us to offer organizations a highly secure yet hassle-free way to protect their secrets, while also enabling us to iterate and improve our platform at an accelerated pace. By combining cutting-edge innovation with a deep understanding of our customers’ needs, we’ve built a compelling solution that continues to drive Akeyless today.”
Core Products
What are the company’s core products and features? Hareven explained:
“Akeyless is redefining identity security for the modern enterprise, delivering the world’s first unified Secrets & Machine Identity platform designed to prevent the #1 cause of breaches – compromised identities and secrets. This is a cloud-native SaaS platform that integrates Vaultless Secrets Management with Certificate Lifecycle Management, Next Gen Privileged Access Management (Secure Remote Access), and Encryption Key Management to manage the lifecycle of all machine identities and secrets across all environments.”
“The Akeyless platform is unique in that it combines a cloud-native SaaS solution with enterprise-level security through our DFC technology. This is why leading organizations trust Akeyless to protect their most sensitive assets without compromising on performance or scalability. Our Distributed Fragments Cryptography (DFC) technology ensures that encryption keys are never exposed in their entirety, even to Akeyless itself, delivering unmatched security while eliminating the overhead of managing and maintaining traditional vaults.”
“With Akeyless, enterprises benefit from:
Secrets Management: Securely store, manage and dynamically inject credentials, API keys, tokens, and other secrets across DevOps pipelines, CI/CD workflows, and production environments.
Certificate Lifecycle Management (CLM): Automate the issuance, renewal, and revocation of certificates to eliminate downtime and reduce operational burdens.
Secure Remote Access: Enable privileged access to critical resources without exposing credentials, ensuring secure connections for IT and DevOps teams.
Encryption & Key Management: Protect sensitive data with encryption and manage the lifecycle of encryption keys without compromising security.
Akeyless simplifies compliance and security, scales seamlessly across hybrid and multi-cloud environments, and provides centralized visibility and control. By unifying these capabilities into one platform, Akeyless empowers enterprises to streamline operations, reduce costs, and stay ahead of evolving security threats.”
Challenges Faced
Have you faced any challenges in your sector of work recently? Hareven acknowledged:
“One of the most pressing challenges we’ve faced is the increasing complexity of securing hybrid and multi-cloud environments, particularly in an era where organizations are scaling faster than ever. This has led to a proliferation of secrets and machine identities, creating a larger attack surface for bad actors to exploit. Compounding this is the tension between maintaining airtight security and ensuring seamless operational agility.”
“At Akeyless, we addressed these challenges by staying ahead of the curve and innovating with a platform-first, holistic approach, building on our unique Distributed Fragments Cryptography (DFC) technology to provide an unparalleled level of security by ensuring that no single entity, including Akeyless, ever has full access to a secret or encryption key. This innovation gave our customers the confidence to migrate to modern environments without the traditional risks.”
“Another challenge has been educating the market about the risks of traditional vault-based solutions, particularly their scalability and management pain points. We’ve tackled this through thought leadership, working closely with our customers to understand their needs, and demonstrating the tangible ROI of our cloud-native SaaS platform.”
“By focusing on innovation and customer-centricity, we’ve not only overcome these challenges but also helped shape the future of identity security. It’s been about turning challenges into opportunities and delivering solutions that truly make a difference in how enterprises protect their most sensitive assets.”
Evolution Of The Company’s Technology
How has the company’s technology evolved since launching? Hareven noted:
“Since Akeyless launched, our technology has grown and evolved to meet the changing security needs of today’s enterprises. What started as a focus on secrets management has transformed into a comprehensive platform that tackles a wide range of identity and security challenges.”
“We’ve built the Akeyless Unified Secrets and Machine Identity Platform to bring together secrets management, certificate lifecycle management, encryption key management, and next-gen privileged access management—all in one place. This holistic approach makes it easier for businesses to secure their machine identities and secrets across multiple environments, reducing complexity and risk.”
“A big leap forward, of course, was our proprietary Distributed Fragments Cryptography (DFC). With DFC, encryption keys are broken into fragments and distributed, so no single entity—not even Akeyless—ever has full access to a key. It’s a game-changing level of security that also simplifies scalability compared to traditional vault-based solutions.”
“We’ve also expanded to include features like automated certificate lifecycle management. This ensures that certificates—critical for securing machine identities—are issued, renewed, and revoked seamlessly, reducing downtime and human error.”
“Another area where we’ve made strides is in adopting a “secretless” approach. By using dynamic, short-lived credentials and passwordless authentication methods, we’ve minimized the risks of credential exposure while streamlining access for users.”
“In short, Akeyless has grown from being a secrets management provider into a fully integrated security platform. We’ve embraced innovation every step of the way to ensure we’re delivering scalable, secure, and efficient solutions that help businesses stay ahead in a fast-changing world.”
Significant Milestones
What have been some of the company’s most significant milestones? Hareven cited:
“Akeyless has achieved several significant milestones that have shaped our journey and growth:
Strategic Investment from Deutsche Bank: In October 2024, we secured a strategic investment from Deutsche Bank’s Corporate Venture Capital group. This collaboration underscores our commitment to addressing emerging cybersecurity challenges and reflects the confidence of leading financial institutions in our solutions.
Launch of the Unified Secrets & Machine Identity Platform: In October 2024, we introduced the world’s first Unified Secrets & Machine Identity Platform. This cloud-native SaaS solution integrates secrets management, certificate lifecycle management, encryption key management, and next-generation privileged access management into a single platform, enhancing security and operational efficiency for enterprises.
Recognition as a “Tomorrow’s Growth Company”: In March 2024, Akeyless was honored as one of Qumra Capital’s “Tomorrow’s Growth Companies” at the Mind the Tech NY conference. This accolade highlights our innovation and rapid growth in the cybersecurity sector.
Series B Funding Round: In November 2022, we raised $65 million in a Series B funding round led by NGP Capital, with participation from existing investors Team8 Capital and Jerusalem Venture Partners (JVP). This brought our total funding to $80 million and enabled us to expand our platform and global team.”
Customer Success Stories
Can you share any specific customer success stories? Hareven highlighted:
“Certainly. One notable example is our collaboration with Cimpress, a global leader in mass customization, operating 13 subsidiaries with over 10,000 employees. Cimpress faced significant challenges in managing secrets across their extensive, multi-cloud infrastructure. Their existing secrets management solution was costly, complex, and unreliable, leading to low adoption rates among their teams.”
“To address these issues, Cimpress partnered with Akeyless to implement a more efficient and user-friendly secrets management system. Akeyless provided a cloud-native SaaS platform that offered fast deployment and zero maintenance, aligning perfectly with Cimpress’s need for a scalable and reliable solution.”
“The results were transformative:
Increased Adoption: The intuitive interface and seamless integration capabilities of Akeyless led to a 270% increase in adoption compared to their previous solution.
Cost Reduction: By eliminating the need for heavy licensing and infrastructure costs, Cimpress achieved a 70% reduction in total cost of ownership.
Enhanced Functionality: Akeyless enabled features that were previously missing or difficult to implement, such as temporary credentials for database users and rotating credentials for on-premises machines.
As Dr. Conor Mancone, Principal Application Security Engineer at Cimpress, says, ‘We set Akeyless up 9 months ago and we haven’t had to worry about credential rotation. We haven’t had to worry about credential leakage. All of our software that’s running, it just works—we haven’t really had to think about it since then.’
This partnership exemplifies how Akeyless’s solutions can effectively address complex security challenges, leading to improved efficiency, reduced costs, and enhanced security for global enterprises.
Another good example is Wix, a global leader in digital presence creation. With millions of sites running on their platform and a diverse, multi-cloud infrastructure, Wix needed a more advanced security solution to scale alongside their rapid growth. Traditional security tools simply weren’t cutting it anymore.
The challenges they faced were significant. They wanted to transition to a Zero Trust model, granting access only on a need-to-know basis while validating every action taken. They also needed to enforce Just-in-Time access to eliminate reliance on static credentials and ensure full visibility into every access session. All of this had to happen without slowing down their engineering teams or compromising their ability to innovate.
That’s where Akeyless came in. We partnered closely with Wix to tailor a solution that not only addressed their secrets management needs but also provided innovative access control capabilities. Akeyless became the foundation of their Zero Trust approach.
Some of the results were transformative:
Simplified Onboarding: Akeyless’s intuitive platform allowed Wix to onboard new users quickly and securely, expanding protection across more resources.
Just-in-Time Controls: By replacing static passwords with temporary credentials, we minimized risks and streamlined operations.
Unified Secrets Management: Akeyless securely stored secrets for both human and programmatic access, keeping everything centralized and easy to manage.
Full Visibility: Detailed logs of every access session gave Wix complete control and insight into their infrastructure.
Thanks to Akeyless, Wix has fully shifted to a Zero Trust model. They’ve enhanced their security posture while maintaining the speed and flexibility their engineering teams need to operate at scale. As Shai Ganny, their SecOps lead, put it, ‘Akeyless was the one solution that supported Wix’s special use cases and gave us the end-to-end solution we needed.’
This story really exemplifies how Akeyless goes beyond just delivering a product—we work as partners with our customers to help them achieve their security goals while staying agile and innovative.”
Funding
When asking Hareven about the company’s funding details, he revealed:
“Our Series B round brought our total funding to $80 million. We are unable to disclose the total amount of the strategic investment from Deutsche Bank’s Corporate Venture Capital group.”
Total Addressable Market
What total addressable market (TAM) size is the company pursuing? Hareven assessed:
“The total addressable market (TAM) for Akeyless, encompassing secrets management, password management, certificate lifecycle management, encryption and key management, and DevOps-focused privileged access management, is estimated to be approximately $44 billion by 2025. This reflects the significant opportunity in these rapidly growing and interrelated markets.”
Differentiation From The Competition
What differentiates the company from its competition? Hareven affirmed:
“Akeyless stands out in a few key ways. First, we take a unified platform approach. While many competitors focus on specific areas like secrets management or privileged access management, we bring everything together—secrets management, certificate lifecycle management, encryption key management, and next-gen privileged access management—in one seamless platform. This not only simplifies security operations for our customers but also eliminates the headache of managing multiple tools.”
“Another big differentiator is our cloud-native SaaS model. Unlike traditional on-premises solutions that require heavy infrastructure and maintenance, our platform is easy to deploy, highly scalable, and always available. It’s designed to meet the needs of modern enterprises operating across multi-cloud and hybrid environments.”
“Then there’s our proprietary Distributed Fragments Cryptography (DFC’). This technology ensures that encryption keys are never fully accessible to anyone—not even us at Akeyless. It’s a zero-knowledge model that our customers trust because it provides an unmatched level of security.”
“We also hear from customers about how much they appreciate the scalability and flexibility of our platform. Akeyless integrates seamlessly with their existing systems and grows alongside them.”
“Finally, we deliver significant cost efficiency. By moving away from traditional vaults and reducing the operational overhead that comes with them, customers often see real savings—alongside improved security.”
“In short, Akeyless is all about providing a secure, scalable, and easy-to-use solution that helps enterprises stay ahead in a rapidly changing security landscape.”
Future Company Goals
What are some of the company’s future company goals? Hareven concluded:
“At Akeyless, we’re always looking ahead to make sure we’re staying at the forefront of identity security. Here are some of the key areas we’re focusing on for the future:
Enhancing Our Platform: We’re constantly improving our Unified Secrets & Machine Identity Platform, adding advanced features to tackle new security challenges and meet the needs of our customers as their environments evolve.
Expanding Our Reach: With exciting developments like our recent strategic investment from Deutsche Bank, we’re planning to grow our presence in new markets and industries, helping more organizations around the world benefit from our solutions.
Driving Innovation: Innovation is at the heart of what we do. We’re investing heavily in research and development to push the boundaries of security technology and ensure our customers always have access to the most advanced tools.
Prioritizing Customer Success: Supporting our customers is a top priority. We’re growing our customer success and support teams to make sure everyone using our platform gets the most out of it.
Building Partnerships: Collaboration is key. We’re looking to strengthen our existing partnerships and form new ones to expand the capabilities of our platform and create a thriving ecosystem for our customers.
Our ultimate goal is simple: to provide innovative, scalable, and customer-focused security solutions that help businesses stay secure and thrive in an ever-changing digital world.”
