Hello and welcome to Protocol Enterprise! Today: how 1Password CEO Jeff Shiner thinks about enterprise security, some rare good news for the chip shortage and SeekOut accepts Tiger Global’s offer.
Spin up
JPMorgan is ready to ditch its old enterprise technology, vowing last week to spend up to $12 billion this year to modernize its infrastructure. “We’re running a whole bunch of major programs, which I don’t think we disclosed, on AWS. And we’re working with Google and Microsoft because we want to have multiple cloud capabilities,” said CEO Jamie Dimon, as reported by The Stack.The future of the password
Identity and authentication are tricky, unsolved problems on the modern internet, and the explosion of cloud apps and services over the past few years has led many consumers toward services like 1Password and enterprises to single-sign-on companies like Okta. But there are still a lot of technical infrastructure and human-centric design challenges that have to be solved.
1Password appears to be eyeing a more enterprise-oriented future with $620 million in new funding, judging by CEO Jeff Shiner’s conversation with Protocol’s David Pierce published today. The company has over 100,000 business users and 60% of its revenue comes from business users, but it has yet to directly challenge the traditional and upstart SSO vendors.
- 1Password works with many SSO products in the market, but it is designed as a user-friendly app that sits in front of those infrastructure tools.
- Many business applications offer several different options for authenticating your identity with that service, and that can get complicated pretty fast, Shiner said.
- As he put it: “Nobody wakes up and says, ‘How do I authenticate?’”
The latest trend in enterprise security is a “passwordless” setup that designates something other than the combination to President Skroob’s luggage as the trigger allowing access, such as a biometric indicator like a fingerprint or a separate device like a security key.
- This approach has a lot of backers, but is still confusing in a remote-work world where people are using a combination of work-issued and personal devices to access corporate data while shopping for groceries, Shiner said.
- Companies can insist on access to those personal devices, but that’s often a tough sell.
- “When we talk about human-centric security, those are problems that people have,” Shiner said. “Those are problems that you need to solve by making it easy for a person to stay secure, as opposed to just throwing layers of infrastructure at it.”
In the enterprise, however, there are lots of problems to contend with.
- This was an eye-opening stat: 1Password research found that 70% of developers can still access corporate resources at their former employers, Shiner said.
- Much of that situation can be blamed on “shadow IT,” or the IT assets spun up to solve a developer problem that the top-down organization has yet to find.
- Administrators routinely cut off access to IT assets when an employee leaves the company, but you can’t turn off access to services you don’t know exist.
Shiner signaled greater enterprise ambitions for 1Password during the conversation.
- “There’s something in our future vision pages we're calling Universal Sign-on,” he said.
- The goal seems to be to streamline the login process and figure out, “How can we get you to that task as quickly as we can?”
1Password plans to double the size of its workforce this year, Shiner told CNBC. That could give it the resources to challenge the enterprise authentication market more directly.
A MESSAGE FROM DATAIKU
At Dataiku, we know data isn’t a destination, so we build tools for what comes after. Dataiku is the only AI platform connecting data and doers, enabling anyone across organizations to transform data into real business impact. Because there is no soul in the machine, only in front of it.
Good news for the chip shortage
A January fire at the Dutch chip manufacturing equipment maker ASML won’t impact its ability to ship a projected 55 extreme ultraviolet lithography machines this year, the company said Wednesday.
The EUV machines, which can cost as much as $180 million each, are used by Intel and TSMC to make the most-advanced chips, and are exclusively made by ASML. Any disruption at ASML could lead to further damage to the already short supply of semiconductors. The company said it has already taken steps to speed the delivery of new EUV tools, such as the elimination of a roughly month-long testing procedure ahead of shipment.
Also worth noting from ASML’s earnings: China remains a big customer, in spite of export controls blocking the sale of EUV machines. ASML generated sales of €1.8 billion last year from China — which buys the non-EUV tools ASML makes — and that is expected to grow 20% in 2022.
With its tools in high demand, ASML had a good year in what is normally a relatively staid industry. The company reported full-year net profit of €5.9 billion ($6.69 billion) on net sales of €18.6 billion.
Startup of the week
Finding technical talent in today’s job market is like trying to find a needle in a haystack. Recruiting software startup SeekOut thinks it can mine hundreds of different sources for potential candidates, and consolidate that data to help recruiters find the right fit.
The company just reached unicorn status after a $115 million funding round led by Tiger Global Management announced last week. It already counts major SaaS players like Salesforce and UiPath as customers in a field that can’t hire developers and salespeople fast enough.
The tech industry is still facing shortages of data scientists, developers and cybersecurity professionals, to name a few. That’s why enterprises and investors are showing an appetite for anything that can help move the needle out of the haystack and into a job opening.
Around the enterprise
Google formed an internal group to study “blockchain and other next-gen distributed computing and data storage technologies,”according to Bloomberg.
Pat Gelsinger wants the U.S. to win back chip manufacturing, telling lawmakers to “not waste this crisis” and approve subsidies for domestic chip production.
The EU is building a centrally managed DNS servicecalled DNS4EU, in response to industry consolidation in the U.S. and privacy concerns.
Google will make “legacy free” G Suite users payfor its services after a mandatory upgrade to Google Workspace on July 1.
Dell is adding new multicloud capabilities to its storage-as-a-service portfolio Apex as it tries to position itself as a “cloud-like” service for companies that still manage a lot of their own hardware.
A MESSAGE FROM DATAIKU
At Dataiku, we know data isn’t a destination, so we build tools for what comes after. Dataiku is the only AI platform connecting data and doers, enabling anyone across organizations to transform data into real business impact. Because there is no soul in the machine, only in front of it.
Thanks for reading — see you tomorrow!