OpenSSL is a toolkit for the Transport Layer Security (TLS) and Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) protocols. It is also a general-purpose cryptography library.
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Venafi Control Plane for Machine Identities
Score 6.0 out of 10
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Venafi, headquartered in Salt Lake City, protects machine identity types by orchestrating cryptographic keys and digital certificates for SSL/TLS, code signing, mobile and SSH.
I would recommend OpenSSL for just about any kind of cryptographic operations that you may need. I can't think of a particular situation where it would not be appropriate to use OpenSSL for a cryptographic function of some sort or another. If you are going to provide some sort of encryption service in a product, OpenSSL is probably the best way to get it off the ground and going. With other competitors, you may get it working, but I fear long term support and interoperability will be an issue.
Venafi allows an engineer to automate the full provisioning process not only installing the certificate to multiple applications but also configuring specific requirements for that application.
The Venafi platform is constantly evolving through its upgrades which occur every quarter to meet client's specific needs. This is an outstanding model however the documentation that follows the upgrades could be more thorough.
LibreSSL is another option to OpenSSL, however, the sheer volume of other applications using OpenSSL and the wide support for it makes OpenSSL a compelling product.
Each public certificate provider has their own flavor of certificate automation, but they are not that flexible and only work with their own products. Certified Security Solutions CMS is a lightweight tool that directly competes with Venafi, but is not nearly as robust or feature risk. This is a straight forward management solution that is best fitted for the smaller companies.
roi is hard to measure for openssl. It's not that it doesn't provide a significant roi, but it is in the background of an application, not the foreground.
An outage is a very devastating event to any large corporation and can cost millions. Venafi's ability to prevent these outages has proven to be a great return on investment for our environment and has helped protect the bottom line.
Venafi automates certificate installation with an included feature to schedule the install in advance. This is a great benefit of the tool because it eliminates human error and prevents any forgotten or overlooked certificates to be renewed. After installation Venafi will also validate the certificate to confirm that it has been installed properly. This shows just how thorough this tool really is.
Security compliance is of the utmost importance in a large organization for auditing purposes and certificate security policies but at times can prove to be difficult to enforce. Venafi has proven to play a pivotal role in enforcing these policies in our environment.
