Lightspeed supports CommandK’s mission to become the go-to enterprise security command center • TechCrunch

CommandK, a startup offering a dedicated platform to manage enterprise security, raised $3 million in a funding round led by Lightspeed.

Companies accumulate a lot of sensitive data and store secrets, such as API tokens, SSH keys, and personally identifiable information. But protecting it is a complex task and requires advanced security prowess. Unfortunately, this can result in a significant financial burden that even many mid- to late-stage companies avoid bearing – until they have a serious security incident that hits their business. CommandK, fresh out of stealth mode, thinks they can solve this problem with their one-stop-shop platform.

The San Francisco-based startup enables companies to deploy its solution in their virtual private cloud to protect their sensitive data and keys without requiring advanced security skills. The startup’s solution comes in the form of a mix of SDKs and APIs that existing developers on a team can easily interact with to improve their security. The platform dashboard acts as a central control panel to inform 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 chief executive of CommandK, said he has seen with his own eyes how companies – in the absence of strong security measures – struggle to comply with data protection laws, such as the Regulation. General Data Protection Act in Europe or the California Consumer Privacy Act in the United States.

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

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

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

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

“In the meantime, what usually happens is that the VP of engineering picks the brightest developer on the team and says, please start doing security too,” Sidhwani said.

CommandK is currently in private beta, a stage 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 engaging with to better understand their issues and add new features accordingly.

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

“It’s still too early for us to be very honest about pricing. But because we’re going to deploy it locally, we’ll do a license-based model,” the co-founder noted.

CommandK has a fully remote team of seven employees, consisting of engineers and a designer. The startup is also hiring senior executives to further improve the product until it is ready for beta release.

“Four undeniable changes are happening in the world of enterprise SaaS today: developers are managing more and more code and microservices; these microservices are deployed in increasingly complex on-premises and cloud environments; reliance on third-party services such as Twilio or Stripe is growing rapidly; and, finally, the engineering teams not only manage the code, but also much of the backend infra and associated configuration files, secrets, API keys, etc. Great companies like Docker, Atlassian, and Github were created to help developers better manage code and microservices,” Hemant Mohapatra, partner at Lightspeed, said in a prepared statement.

“We believe CommandK will be the go-to company for helping developers better manage their security, secrets, and configuration infrastructure with the same efficiency and security that they manage their code today.”

Alongside Lightspeed, AllIn Capital and angel investors such as Robin Vasan (Founder MangoCapital, HashiCorp Board Member, Couchbase, InfluxData), Jon Gelsey (ex-CEO Auth0), Sundeep Peechu (GP Felicis) and Akash Saxena (ex-CTO Disney+) also participated in the seed funding round.