Lightspeed supports CommandK’s mission to become the central command center for enterprise security • businessroundups.org

CommandKa startup offering a dedicated platform for managing enterprise security has raised $3 million in a launch round led by Lightspeed.

Companies collect a lot of sensitive data and store secrets such as API tokens, SSH keys and personally identifiable information. But protecting that is a complex task and requires advanced security skills. Unfortunately, this can come at a significant cost that even many mid to late stage companies avoid – until they are faced with a serious security incident affecting their business. CommandK, fresh out of stealth mode, believes it can solve this problem with its one-stop platform.

The San Francisco-based startup allows companies to deploy their solution in their virtual private cloud to protect their sensitive data and keys without the need for advanced security skills. The startup’s solution consists of a mix of software development kits and APIs that allow existing developers in a team to easily communicate to improve their security. The dashboard of the platform acts as a central control panel to inform about what is broken in the system to ensure data protection.

Jayesh Sidhwani and Rohan Prabhu, who previously worked together at neobank Jupiter, founded CommandK in June last year. Sidhwani, who is the CEO of CommandK, said he has seen firsthand how companies – in the absence of strict security measures – struggle to comply with data protection laws such as the European General Data Protection Regulation or California’s Consumer Privacy Act in the United States. United States.

Companies sometimes rely on third-party microservices and software-as-a-service tools that spread their sensitive data across multiple platforms, exposing them to a wider attack surface.

CommandK says it addresses that limitation by securing the data within the company’s infrastructure.

“Since we’re dealing with sensitive data, we wanted to make sure that while you’re getting the best experience, the data doesn’t leave your network,” Sidhwani told businessroundups.org.

CommandK supports a variety of cloud infrastructures, so you can use the platform to secure your company’s data on AWS, Google Cloud, or both. While CommandK’s platform can be used by a company at any stage of its life, he said, most companies are starting to feel the pain of requiring strict security measures at a Series B+ level.

“Until then, what usually happens is that the VP of engineering picks the brightest developer on the team and says, hey, please get into security,” Sidhwani said.

CommandK is currently in a private beta, a phase it intends to stay in for a few more months. Sidhwani said there is a waiting list of customers who have signed up for the platform the startup is working with to better understand their issues and add new features accordingly.

Over time, Sidhwani said the plan is to go with a subscription model that will help generate revenue.

“It is still early for us to be very honest about prices. But since we’ll be deploying it on-premises, we’ll be using a license-based model,” the co-founder noted.

CommandK has an all-remote team of seven, consisting of engineers and a designer. The startup is also hiring more senior staff to further improve the product until it is ready to be available from beta.

“Four undeniable shifts are taking place in the business SaaS world today: Developers are managing more and more code and microservices; these microservices are deployed in increasingly complex on-prem and cloud environments; dependence on third-party services, such as Twilio or Stripe, is rapidly increasing; and finally, technical teams manage not only code, but much of the backend infra and associated configuration files, secrets, API keys, and more. Big companies like Docker, Atlassian and Github are built to help developers better manage code and microservices,” Hemant Mohapatra, partner at Lightspeed, said in a drafted statement.

“We believe CommandK will be the defining company in helping developers better manage their security, secrets, and configuration infrastructure with the same efficiency and security as they manage their code today.”

In addition to Lightspeed, AllIn Capital and angel investors such as Robin Vasan (founder MangoCapital, board member of HashiCorp, Couchbase, InfluxData), Jon Gelsey (ex-CEO Auth0), Sundeep Peechu (GP Felicis) and Akash Saxena (ex-CTO Disney+) took also participate in the start-up financing round.