Customer Identity & Access Management (CIAM) , Identity & Access Management , Security Operations

Founder Sachin Nayyar Back as CEO of Identity Vendor Saviynt

Nayyar Will Pursue New Machine Identity Management Business During 2nd Stint as CEO
Founder Sachin Nayyar Back as CEO of Identity Vendor Saviynt
Sachin Nayyar, executive chairman and CEO, Saviynt (Image: Saviynt)

Saviynt has brought founder and longtime leader Sachin Nayyar back as its chief executive to better govern access around privileged, machine and third-party identities.

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The Los Angeles-based identity governance vendor has tasked Nayyar with implementing a converged identity strategy that incorporates everything from critical apps and cloud workloads to IoT devices and bots. Nayyar, who returns to the company he led from its 2010 founding until January 2018, replaces Amit Saha, who had served as CEO since Nayyar's departure and will become Saviynt's chief growth officer.

"I want to go back to my identity roots," Nayyar tells Information Security Media Group. "We have become the No. 1 enterprise-grade cloud identity and access governance product on the market today, with over 1.5 billion identity associations in our cloud infrastructure that we support for our customers."

Nayyar's return to Saviynt comes less than two months after he left the CEO role at SIEM vendor Securonix and was replaced by longtime Ivanti, BMC Software and SAP executive Nayaki Nayyar, to whom he is not related. Sachin Nayyar served as CEO of both Securonix and Saviynt from 2010 until January 2018 before spending the past five years just at Securonix. He remains executive chairman of both companies (see: Securonix Taps Ivanti, BMC, SAP Vet Nayaki Nayyar as New CEO).

"I'm very proud of what we achieved at Securonix and I needed to turn my attention toward Saviynt," Nayyar says.

A Cash Infusion and New Blood in the C-Suite

Saviynt also announced Tuesday that it has closed a $205 million growth financing round, which Nayyar says will be used to invest in R&D and world-class services. The cash infusion led by global investment management firm AllianceBernstein comes just 16 months after the company hauled in $130 million from HPS Investment Partners and PNC Bank.

Accompanying Nayyar on his return to Saviynt is Paul Zolfaghari, the former MicroStrategy president and Carrick Capital Partners managing director, who will spearhead Saviynt's business operations as the company's president while Nayyar handles the strategy and vision. Nayyar praised Zolfaghari's expertise in scaling and operations and says he's keen to use Zolfaghari's leadership to grow Saviynt.

Nayyar, meanwhile, says Saha's shift from CEO to chief growth officer will free him from burdensome day-to-day operational requirements and allow him to focus entirely on strategic customers, prospects and partners. The move will take advantage of Saha's knowledge in the identity and access management space to ensure Saviynt's most important customers receive world-class service, support and guidance.

At Saviynt, Nayyar plans to put more resources behind its privileged access management solution, which he says is critical for limiting the number of privileged users as cloud digitization efforts lead to increased access. Nayyar also wants to redouble Saviynt's efforts around safeguarding applications such as SAP, Oracle and Epic Systems, given that critical applications represent the keys to the kingdom in the identity world (see: 6 Critical Capabilities for an Application GRC Solution).

Organizations struggle with providing governance and management around machine identities such as bots, IoT devices and cloud workloads and services since it's tough to figure out who owns the workload, who's signing off on it, how long access is needed, and how much it is used, Nayyar says. Governing bot workloads from both a security management and operational management perspective is critical.

Customers Question Maturity of IAM Programs

Nayyar also wants to bring more analytics to Saviynt's day-to-day operations so that customers have additional actionable intelligence as they configure their identity processes. Saviynt can more effectively leverage its warehouse of identity data to share best practices in areas such as reducing the number of orphaned Active Directory accounts if a client has more orphaned accounts than its peers, Nayyar says.

"Customers are today really questioning the maturity of their identity and access management program and their posture because they don't know where they sit compared to the industry in terms of data," Nayyar says. "Saviynt wants to provide you data based on your industry, your vertical and also the size of your company so you can have very actionable goals."

From a metrics standpoint, Nayyar says, Saviynt is laser-focused on maintaining annual growth rates of more than 35% while becoming cash flow positive by the fourth quarter of 2024. Nayyar says Saviynt isn't looking at any layoffs at this time and hopes to take advantage of job cuts elsewhere to bring key difference makers into Saviynt.

"Our existing customers are seeing a lot of value in this converged identity message where we can get rid of three to five other products for them and give them a single product and a single pane of glass to work with," Nayyar says. "They're seeing better total cost of ownership with a single product, faster time for implementation and a better experience."


About the Author

Michael Novinson

Michael Novinson

Managing Editor, Business, ISMG

Novinson is responsible for covering the vendor and technology landscape. Prior to joining ISMG, he spent four and a half years covering all the major cybersecurity vendors at CRN, with a focus on their programs and offerings for IT service providers. He was recognized for his breaking news coverage of the August 2019 coordinated ransomware attack against local governments in Texas as well as for his continued reporting around the SolarWinds hack in late 2020 and early 2021.




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