Our investment in Mondoo: simplifying infrastructure security operations
All successful start-ups, from frontier technology firms to those realising the future of food, are built on shaking up traditional ways of thinking and doing. This is the mindset behind the companies that have upended swathes of the economy, solved major global challenges, and, ultimately, delivered on the potential of digital technologies. But a culture of continuous innovation comes with its own challenges.
Founders and investors are having to contemplate the knock-on effects of their innovations as technology success stories begin to wrestle with the new structural and behavioural norms that their progress has created. This is particularly true for digital infrastructure, where a mass migration to the cloud presents founders with challenges and opportunities in equal measure.
It’s no secret that the technology stack is becoming more complex than ever. Some estimates suggest that the total cloud market capitalisation has more than doubled from $1 trillion to $2.2 trillion between 2020 and 2021 alone, largely as a result of the mass migration to the cloud. But this growth comes at a cost: the speed of the shift to cloud is poised to run faster than our ability to secure it. Complexity breeds vulnerability, and this is particularly true when each additional layer of the stack creates more loopholes to exploit and reduces the capacity for engineering teams to successfully prevent attacks.
That’s why today we’re thrilled to announce our partnership with the team at Mondoo, who have been amongst the earliest to spot this threat and develop a solution. The Mondoo platform effectively tackles complicated security topics across cloud, VMs, containers, and on-premise deployments. Mondoo was founded in 2020 by DevOps and security experts Soo Choi-Andrews, Christoph Hartmann, and Dominik Richter, who previously founded Inspec, devsec.io, and OpenStack. Their viewpoint has been shaped by their experience at Google, Chef Software, NASA, and Deutsche Telekom. Mondoo has developed a product targeted at the three security challenges typically faced by organisations seeking to manage hybrid infrastructure: confidence, prioritisation, and team alignment.
What is particularly compelling about Mondoo’s mission is the belief that these problems must be addressed from the ground up. For Soo, Christoph, and Dominik, the infrastructure developer (who is tasked with working with these issues on a daily basis) must be included in efforts to manage the security of a business––rather than resting the burden solely with an organisation’s security team.
By empowering all infrastructure developers across the organisation, Mondoo’s solution dramatically improves the prospects of a company building and maintaining a robust security stance. The data presented to teams allows for real-time answers to questions about what is running, its state, configuration, and the risk profile associated with environments.
Ultimately, we believe that all modern businesses are cloud businesses. And every one of them needs to stay safe. That’s why we’re hugely excited to partner with Soo, Christoph, and Dominik as Mondoo continues on its journey.
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