INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
More devices are coming onto the Internet every single day, and that’s especially true within organizations that have a fleet of devices
with access to sensitive data — which means there are even more holes for potential security breaches.That’s the goal of Kolide
The aim is to ensure that companies have access to tools that give them the ability to get a thorough analysis of every bit of data they
have — and where they have it
The Kolide Cloud, its initial major rollout for Mac and Linux devices, turns an entire fleet of apps and devices into what’s basically a
table that anyone can query to get an up-to-date look at what’s happening within their business
Kolide looks to provide a robust set of tools that help analyze that data
By doing that, companies may have a better shot at detecting security breaches that might come from even mundane miscalculations or
employees being careless about the security of that data
The company said today it has raised $8 million in new venture financing in a round led by Matrix Partners.“It’s not just an independent
event,” Kolide CEO Jason Meller said
“The way I think about it, if you look at any organization, there’s a pathway to a massive security incident, and the pathway is rather
Let’s say I’m a developer that works at one of these organizations and I need to fix a bug, and pull the production database
Now I have a laptop with this data on this, and I did this and didn’t realize my disk wasn’t encrypted
I went from these innocuous activities to something existentially concerning which could have been prevented if you knew which devices
weren’t encrypted and had customer data
A lot of organizations are focused on these very rare events, but the reality is the risk that they face is mishandling of customer data or
sensitive information and not thinking about the basics.”Kolide is built on top of Osquery, a toolkit that allows organizations to
essentially view all their devices or operations as if it were a single database
That means that companies can query all of these incidents or any changes in the way employees use data or the way that data is structured
You could run a simple select query for, say, apps and see what is installed where
It allows for a level of granularity that could help drill down into those little innocuous incidents Meller talks about, but all that still
needs some simpler approach or interface for larger companies that are frantically trying to handle edge cases but may be overlooking the
basics.Like other companies looking to build a business on top of open source technology, the company looks to offer ways to calibrate those
tools for a company’s niche needs that they necessarily don’t actively cover
The argument here is that by basing the company and tools on open source software, they’ll be able to lean on that community to rapidly
adapt to a changing environment when it comes to security, and that will allow them to be more agile and have a better sales pitch to larger
companies.There’s going to be a lot of competition in terms of application monitoring and management, especially as companies adopt more
and more devices in order to handle their operations
That opens up more and more holes for potential breaches, and in the end, Kolide hopes to create a more granular bird’s-eye view of
what’s happening rather than just creating a flagging system without actually explaining what’s happening
There are some startups attacking device management tools, like Fleetsmith does for Apple devices (which raised $7.7 million), and to be
sure provisioning and management is one part of the equation
But Kolide hopes to provide a strong toolkit that eventually creates a powerful monitoring system for organizations as they get bigger and
bigger.“We believe data collection is an absolute commodity,” Meller said
“That’s a fundamentally different approach, they believe the actual collection tools are proprietary
We feel this is a solved problem
Our goal isn’t to take info and regurgitate it in a fancy user interface
We believe we should be paid based on the insights and help manage their fleet better
We can tell the whole industry is swinging this way due to the traction OSQuery had
It’s not a new trend, it’s really the end point as a result of companies that have suffered from this black box situation.”
