The OpenID Foundation is pleased to welcome Defakto Security as a new Sustaining Corporate Member.

Defakto secures the non-human identities driving the next generation of cloud, automation, and AI. Global enterprises rely on Defakto to eradicate long-lived secrets in favor of short-lived, cryptographically verifiable identities.

As cloud, automation and AI deployments scale, workloads and agents must authenticate across distributed environments securely and interoperably, without new identity silos or long-lived credentials. Defakto is helping lead the development of open industry standards to make that possible, with leadership and contributions across SPIFFE, WIMSE, MCP, OAuth and, most recently, WISE at the OpenID Foundation.

Open standards in practice

Defakto’s platform is built on SPIFFE, OAuth, OpenID Connect, and emerging standards such as WIMSE. Some of the largest and most complex organisations in retail, financial services, technology and semiconductors use it to put these standards into practice.

Gail Hodges, Executive Director of the OpenID Foundation, said: “Identity for software and AI agents is a growing focus for our community. Thought leaders like Defakto are contributing to the standards we need, as well as the strategy and conformance tools we need to support scale.” 

Pieter Kasselman, VP of Open Standards at Defakto Security, said: “Defakto is proud to join the OpenID Foundation as a Sustaining Corporate Member and deepen our participation in the open identity community. Open standards are central to the identity industry and how our customers secure their infrastructure. 

“The OpenID Foundation is a vital strand in the open identity ecosystem, alongside SPIFFE, WIMSE, OAuth and MCP, and weaving them together is what makes that ecosystem interoperable."

As a Sustaining Corporate Member, Defakto joins other global identity and technology leaders on the OpenID Foundation Board of Directors, helping advance the Foundation’s mission as an open standards body.

The OpenID Foundation has long held that robust, interoperable identity standards depend on broad industry collaboration. Defakto’s membership strengthens that effort with deep expertise in non-human identity for workloads and agents.

About the OpenID Foundation

The OpenID Foundation (OIDF) is a global open standards body committed to building trusted identity ecosystems. Our mission is to lead the global community in identity standards that are secure, interoperable, and privacy respecting. Founded in 2007, we are a community of technical experts. The Foundation's OpenID Connect standard is now used by billions of people across millions of applications. More recently, the FAPI security profile - built on OAuth 2.0 - has become the standard of choice for interoperable Open Banking and Open Data implementations, while OpenID for Verifiable Credentials specifications are underpinning a new generation of digital wallets. Today, the OpenID Foundation's standards are the connective tissue that enable people to assert their identity and access their data at scale, the scale of the internet, enabling "networks of networks" to interoperate globally. Individuals, companies, governments and non-profits are encouraged to join or participate. Find out more at openid.net.

To learn more about conformance testing and self-certification, please visit the OpenID Foundation’s FAQ section.

About Defakto Security

Defakto secures the next era of automation with a complete Non-Human IAM platform, purpose-built for end-to-end NHI lifecycle management. By eradicating static secrets and overprivileged accounts, Defakto helps enterprises reduce breach risk, simplify compliance, and scale automation with confidence. Trusted by Global 2000 companies, Defakto was founded by leaders in large-scale identity deployments. The platform secures every automated interaction across workloads, pipelines, multi-cloud environments, and AI agents. Backed by XYZ, The General Partnership, and WndrCo, Defakto is defining the future of IAM for a world powered by automation. Learn more at www.defakto.security