- Pioneering zero-trust networking and software-defined access company Elisity emerged from stealth and announced its vision for an architectural security transformation with identity as the new perimeter using Elisity Cognitive Trust (ECT)
Pioneering zero-trust networking and software-defined access company Elisity emerged from stealth and announced its vision for an architectural security transformation with identity as the new perimeter using Elisity Cognitive Trust (ECT). Originally founded in 2018, the company closed a $7.5 million seed round of funding that year led by Atlantic Bridge. And with its seed round, Elisity has been scaling its engineering, sales, and marketing teams to ramp up ahead of the company’s launch.
Brian Long, managing partner at Atlantic Bridge; Joe Pinto, chief customer experience officer at Pure Storage; and Ayman Sayed, chief executive officer at BMC Software had joined Elisity’s board of directors to guide the company through rapid growth. And Elisity’s advisors include security and networking luminaries, including Greg Akers (former SVP at Cisco), Praveen Akkiraju (Softbank Ventures), Woody Sessoms (former SVP at Cisco), and Jeff Tantsura (Internet Architecture Board).
Organizations are continuing to navigate digital transformation initiatives, including moving to the cloud and using the Internet as their corporate backbone. And they are also focused on ensuring employees can work from any location and on any device. This modernization increases the digital threat surface and the need for a new approach to protecting an organization’s data. The company also today announced additional details about its Cognitive Trust solution.
The Elisity team — which includes veterans from Cisco, Qualys and Viptela — pointed out that most companies depend on security and policy based on physical location or low-level networking constructs like VLAN, IP address, Mac address, VRFs or VPNs. This “castle-walls-and-moat architecture” for protection is as ineffective today as a stone wall against cannon fire. And Cognitive Trust is a new paradigm that makes identity the new perimeter, allowing companies to secure their data from edge to edge while ensuring access without compromise to any application or data from anywhere and by any device or user.
Many vendors have attempted to solve the problem, but have failed to provide a comprehensive end-to-end offering. Or they are using legacy approaches to retrofit existing access to branch, remote, and edge architectures. With workforces untethered – using any device and any network to access these apps – there is a need to secure access across on-premises and cloud apps.
And in addition, connectivity advancements like 5G, continue to mature and more organizations are leveraging innovations such as AI, IoT, and multi-cloud to further fuel their digital future to improve operational efficiency, customer engagement, and new sources of revenue. And legacy solutions were not designed for these needs and are exposing organizations to risks including lateral movement, insider attacks, and potentially allowing everyone access to cloud apps.
Elisity is known for bridging the divide between the old approach and offers a new approach that combines Zero Trust Access and a Software-Defined Perimeter with AI. And according to Elisity CEO and Co-Founder Burjiz Pithawala, the new enterprise boundary is identity, giving you control over access at the front door regardless of its location. With Elisity, users, devices, and applications are authorized based on a policy before they can communicate with organizational resources.
Elisity helps enterprises in many industries, including manufacturing, pharmaceuticals, financial services, and healthcare, realize cost savings, time savings, risk mitigation, etc. since they no longer rely on disparate and complex software and hardware to protect access to data and assets. With this new approach, organizations can reduce the total number of tools required to manage access. Access is never taken for granted as it is continually monitored using artificial intelligence.
KEY QUOTES:
“The old paradigm of connecting first and then applying policies and security is broken. Elisity makes it possible to secure enterprise data in a world transformed by cloud, mobility, and connected devices and under constant attack by increasingly sophisticated bad actors. With Elisity Cognitive Trust, identity is the new perimeter, allowing you to proactively protect your enterprise assets and data while ensuring access without compromise to any application or any data from any device by any user from anywhere.”
– Burjiz Pithawala
“We believe the approach Elisity is putting forward for enterprise security makes them uniquely positioned to radically change how customers access and protect their data. Transforming this market by delivering the technology to transform organizations to lean trust and protect them from accidentally exposing access to critical apps, either in the cloud or on-premises, is a big opportunity and will continue to grow.”
– Brian Long, Co-Founder and Managing Partner at Atlantic Bridge
“Elisity helps enterprises solve the challenge of securing access to their assets and data in the complex modern world of blurring enterprise boundaries and mobile workforces. With Elisity and the company’s Cognitive Trust solution, enterprises now have a combined zero trust networking and software-defined access solution — a policy first, connectivity second enterprise network security model.”
– Ayman Sayed, President and CEO at BMC Software
“Our modern remote work movement stresses the need to use new security perimeters and practices to keep companies mobile and safe. Elisity takes the fresh approach of combining Zero Trust Access with an AI-enabled software-defined perimeter to give companies a way to secure their enterprise when the cloud is the data center, the network is the Internet and any device is a work device.”
– IT Management Veteran Dave Lavelle
“With Elisity Cognitive Trust, your enterprise can thrive in a world without boundaries. This modern approach to security gives you real-time information regarding who is accessing resources and from where and supports the requirements of remote access in a secure way that meets the needs of customers.”
– Reza Nazeman, Founder and CEO at CIO Ventures
