Britive Welcomes Nauman Mustafa as VP of Solutions Engineering and Chief Strategy Officer

Nauman shares his thoughts on why he joined the Britive team

Hard work, perseverance, spirit, honesty, and integrity are key tenets of a successful and rewarding professional career. I was fortunate to learn these values from my father, who demonstrated them throughout his highly decorated career in the pharmaceutical industry. He taught me the importance of commitment to excellence, a sense of urgency, and how everyday matters—little things make all the difference. Though he is no longer with us, his teachings remain key ingredients of who I am today. Over the years, my background in competitive sports and the opportunity to work with proven leaders have further refined my character. Specifically, they helped me learn the street smarts required to be successful in the modern business world. 

Another crucial aspect, alongside these traits, is the importance of “architecture.” Whether in life, building an organization, or constructing a security posture or cloud network, the key is to define your architecture based on foundational pillars. If you have the right architecture, life is good; otherwise, things can become unimaginably difficult. 

The technology landscape has evolved considerably in recent years, transitioning from data centers to the cloud, and then to hybrid, multi-cloud, and edge environments. The dynamics of how applications and services are hosted and accessed have changed drastically, requiring new architectures and modern tools. A few years ago, during the initial migration to the cloud, there was a strong focus on lift-and-shift strategies and migration-at-all-cost campaigns. With deadlines to vacate data centers, many enterprises migrated but did not modernize, keeping their traditional toolsets and processes. Today, enterprises’ C-level executives and decision-makers are more informed and educated, leading to a much more methodical, architecture-based strategy for cloud migration with greater emphasis on “modernization.” This approach results in remarkable improvements in performance, security, cost, and overall agility, helping businesses maintain their competitive edge and bring value-focused innovation to their clients. 

Customers are in pursuit of standardized architecture in various layers of their cloud stack. The lack of standards and reference frameworks for customers to follow when building their infrastructure across hybrid, multi-cloud, and edge environments makes it challenging to leverage cloud services effectively. Each cloud service provider offers services that work reasonably well within their own ecosystems, but this adds operational complexity for customers who must design and build environments that are normalized, operationally simple, and secure across disparate environments. Decades ago, vendors like Cisco provided industry standards such as Leaf-Spine and Access-Distribution-Core architectures. At Aviatrix (where I worked previously), we were fortunate to develop something similar for the cloud, known as Multi-cloud Network Architecture (MCNA) for the networking layer of the cloud stack. 

A similar cloud standardization effort is required in the cybersecurity layer of the cloud stack as well. Early-stage startups offer an opportunity to lead the way in the sincerest and most customer-obsessed manner, as there are no tech debts and incumbent's dilemmas to deal with. It is an opportunity to demonstrate greatness by being customer-obsessed, innovating faster and building long-lasting customer trust and partnerships. Working with visionaries, champions, and evangelists to solve genuine business problems and shape the market is truly rewarding. 

Keeping this aspiration in mind, when a board member introduced me to the team at Britive, I immediately found a match. 

Britive is a modern Cloud PAM (Privileged Access Management) solution in the cyber-prevention category, built for enterprises seeking granular control of human and non-human identities to protect their crown jewel apps and infrastructure. Founders Artyom Poghosyan and Sameer Hiremath have extensive experience in cybersecurity identity space and built the SaaS platform from the ground up for the modern cloud era. They took a very pragmatic approach, incorporating customer and CISO guidance at every step of their development journey. As enterprises look to decouple authentication from authorization and modernize their privileged entitlement approach, Britive provides an innovative, dynamic, and policy-driven way to manage access that dramatically reduce risks, simple to operate, and effective across all cloud types, data centers and Kubernetes environments. 

At recent tech conferences Identiverse and TechEx, I spoke with several customers and Just-In-Time (JIT) ephemeral access is top of mind for many application and security leaders. However, as part of their modernization initiatives, most are looking for cloud-smart solutions that normalize operations across environments, regardless of cloud type. Britive eradicates static access, making operations easier without compromising developer agility. 

Aside from the product-market fit, here are six Britive superpowers that I evaluated, which are key to their future trajectory as a leader in the modern CPAM space: 

1. Customer Trust: Existing customers love the product, evidenced by a 100% expansion rate. 
2. Product-Market Fit: Key Fortune 500 customers are on the list. 
3. Endorsement: Some customers who used Britive moved on to work here, showing belief in the product and the value it brings. 
4. Experienced Leadership: Engineering leaders innovate fast and have a long history in the IAM space and know the landscape well, helping with blind spots and market awareness. 
5. Future-Proof: Hybrid-Multi-cloud is here to stay, the need for cybersecurity is increasing, and CPAM will continue to gain importance in the identity layer of the overall zero-trust posture of modern enterprises. 
6. Force Multiplier Through Strategic Partnerships: Customers are looking for vendors to consolidate their security stack. Several vendors are focusing on strategic partnerships to make it easier for customers to consume. Britive CPAM fits nicely with different vendors in the observability, discovery, detection, DBaaS, and incident management landscape. 

Britive's consultative and prescriptive approach to solving problems aligns with the strategic initiatives of business leaders in security, DevOps, and cloud operations. This is the key to building long-lasting partnerships and trust. 

I am confident Britive will become a favorite among customers looking to standardize and modernize their approach in the CPAM identity space. In a world where DevOps and security teams are continually looking to minimize risk while increasing developer efficiency, I see Britive as an extraordinarily strong choice. 

If this is an area of interest to you, I would love to meet and show how we are innovating in our mission to eliminate security risks, so you can capitalize on the massive benefits the cloud landscape presents for your business