Kolide, a ‘transparency-first’ endpoint safety platform, raises $17M

Endpoint safety platform Kolide today announced that it closed a $17 million series B financing round led by OpenView Partners, with Matrix Partners participating. The capital brings the company’s total raised to $27 million to date, and CEO Jason Meller says it’ll be used to assistance Kolide’s go-to-industry tactic and the hiring of extra engineers and developers.

The regular IT practices of locking down and surveilling endpoints — e.g., work laptops and smartphones — may possibly not be suited for today’s pandemic world. Remote migration and the intermingling of private and work lives on enterprise-owned computer systems have challenged the approaches and procedures commonplace in IT device management. An option paradigm is emerging in what Meller calls “honest security,” which appears to achieve an organization’s IT and safety objectives by communicating and straight involving finish-customers.

“While most security practitioners are honest, the tools they are using may not be. If better tools were available which helped improve the relationship between the security team and the end-user, security teams would see their value immediately,” Meller, who previously served as CEO at Threat Stack and chief safety strategist at FireEye-backed Mandiant, told VentureBeat by way of e mail. “Such values and benefits include a transparent collection of data, a more knowledgeable and security-versed workforce, and meeting your company and team’s internal security and compliance goals.”

Kolide, which Meller cofounded in 2016 with Mike Arpaia and Zach Wasserman, embraces this philosophy with a solution that delivers alerts, remediation, and more delivered by way of Slack. Customers and their staff are offered features like problem context self-remediation methods for Mac, Windows, and Linux devices and a customized privacy center, all constructed on the open supply and Facebook-led universal endpoint agent project Osquery.

“[We] believe that the values an organization stands behind should be well-represented in their security program and that positive working relationships between end-users and the IT team are precious and worth fostering. However, because today’s industry is obsessed with creating tools focused only on extending visibility and increasing the IT team’s control over the employee’s digital assets, this critical relationship is irreparably destroyed,” Meller mentioned. “Kolide builds user-focused endpoint solutions for teams that value productivity, transparency, and employee happiness via Slack. Why user-focused? Because end-users are capable of making rational and informed decisions about security risks when educated and honestly motivated.”

‘Honest security’

Meller tends to make the case that most modern day workplaces have safety plans and applications with small-to-no educational element or transparency. This leads to IT teams viewing staff as obstacles rather than allies, as nicely as to ignorance of — and even resistance to — standard safety protocols. In a current survey that Kolide performed, the enterprise located that 44% of organizations dissatisfied with regular endpoint safety showed a want to adopt more truthful approaches and that 71% believed they stand to advantage from these approaches.

“Kolide’s [honest security] values and benefits include a transparent collection of data, a more knowledgeable and security-versed workforce, and meeting your company and team’s internal security and compliance goals,” Meller mentioned. “These benefits can only be realized when that relationship is reinforced with accountability, transparency, and ethics. In other words: honesty.”

Kolide, which has an 8-particular person group, has 250 shoppers (which includes 1Password) with a combined thousands of customers and 23,000 devices below management. According to Meller, Glassdoor makes use of Kolide to help customers and orchestrate safety compliance, enabling staff to know more about the state of their machines and assist with their care and upkeep.

“In a world full of remote work and security concerns, Kolide is vowing to be the honest tool that professionals and IT teams need right now,” Meller added.

Kolide occupies the quickly-developing international endpoint safety industry, which is projected to attain $23 billion in worth by 2027. Competitors incorporate Huntress, Automox, and Uptycs, the last of which not too long ago nabbed $50 million in a series C funding round led by Norwest Venture Partners.

Originally appeared on: TheSpuzz