Hewlitt Packard Enterprises (HPE) has announced the acquisition of cloud native security startup Scytale, though neither company has disclosed the acquisition price.

Scytale, which is built on the open-source Secure Production Identity Framework for Everyone (SPIFFE) protocol, works to ensure applications know when it’s OK to share information with each other when no human intervention is used.

Application-to-application identity and access management is an area HPE is looking to expand into, according to a blog post announcing the acquisition written by Dave Husak, HPE fellow and GM of cloudless initiative.

“As HPE progresses into this next chapter, delivering on our differentiated, edge to cloud platform as-a-service strategy, security will continue to play a fundamental role,” Husak wrote in the blog post. “We recognize that every organization that operates in a hybrid, multi-cloud environment requires 100% secure, zero trust systems, that can dynamically identify and authenticate data and applications in real-time,” he added.

Husak also stressed that HPE would continue to be stewards of the SPIFFE and SPIRE (the SPIFFE Runtime Environment) projects, which both fall under the advocay of the Cloud Native Computing Foundation.

Co-founder of Scytale Sunil James wrote a blog post of his own announcing the agreement, and indicated that HPE’s respect of Scytale’s startup roots was an important part of the deal.

“Scytale’s DNA is security, distributed systems, and open-source. Under HPE, Scytale will continue to help steward SPIFFE,” James wrote. “Our ever-growing and vocal community will lead us. We’ll toil to maintain this transparent and vendor-neutral project, which will be fundamental in HPE’s plans to deliver a dynamic, open, and secure edge-to-cloud platform,” he added.

Scytale was founded in 2017 and has raised $8 million so far, the bulk of which was in a $5 million Series A round last March that was led by Bessemer Venture Partners.

Source: TechCrunch