GitGuardian raises $12M to help developers write more secure code and ‘fix’ GitHub leaks

Published December 4, 2019

Data breaches that could cause millions of dollars in potential damages have been the bane of the life of many a company. What’s required is a great deal of real-time monitoring. The problem is that this world has become incredibly complex. A SANS Institute survey found half of company data breaches were the result of account or credential hacking.

GitGuardian has attempted to address this with a highly developer-centric cybersecurity solution.

It’s now attracted the attention of major investors, to the tune of $12 million in Series A funding, led by Balderton Capital . Scott Chacon, co-founder of GitHub, and Solomon Hykes, founder of Docker, also participated in the round.

The startup plans to use the investment from Balderton Capital to expand its customer base, predominantly in the U.S. Around 75% of its clients are currently based in the U.S., with the remainder being based in Europe, and the funding will continue to drive this expansion.

Built to uncover sensitive company information hiding in online repositories, GitGuardian says its real-time monitoring platform can address the data leaks issues. Modern enterprise software developers have to integrate multiple internal and third-party services. That means they need incredibly sensitive “secrets,” such as login details, API keys and private cryptographic keys used to protect confidential systems and data.

GitGuardian’s systems detect thousands of credential leaks per day. The team originally built its launch platform with public GitHub in mind; however, GitGuardian is built as a private solution to monitor and notify on secrets that are inappropriately disseminated in internal systems as well, such as private code repositories or messaging systems.

Solomon Hykes, founder of Docker and investor at GitGuardian, said: “Securing your systems starts with securing your software development process. GitGuardian understands this, and they have built a pragmatic solution to an acute security problem. Their credentials monitoring system is a must-have for any serious organization.”

Do they have any competitors?

Co-founder Jérémy Thomas told me: “We currently don’t have any direct competitors. This generally means that there’s no market, or the market is too small to be interesting. In our case, our fundraise proves we’ve put our hands on something huge. So the reason we don’t have competitors is because the problem we’re solving is counterintuitive at first sight. Ask any developer, they will say they would never hardcode any secret in public source code. However, humans make mistakes and when that happens, they can be extremely serious: it can take a single leaked credential to jeopardize an entire organization. To conclude, I’d say our real competitors so far are black hat hackers. Black hat activity is real on GitHub. For two years, we’ve been monitoring organized groups of hackers that exchange sensitive information they find on the platform. We are competing with them on speed of detection and scope of vulnerabilities covered.”

Solomon Hykes leaves Docker, the company he founded

Published March 28, 2018

Docker founder Solomon Hykes today announced that he is leaving the company he started.

Docker, the open source project and eponymous company that kickstarted today’s container hype, was founded by Hykes in 2010 (at the time, it was called dotCloud). Hykes quickly hired a CEO and for the longest time, he remained the company’s CTO. He left that role last September to become the company’s chief architect and vice chairman of its board of directors, only a few months after the company’s long-time CEO Ben Golub also departed.

Hykes stresses that his departure shouldn’t be seen as a dramatic event, but that’s surely not how the community will react to this. For the longest time, Hykes was synonymous with Docker, after all, and even though the company has been through some upheaval in recent years, his departure comes as a major surprise.

“A founder’s departure is usually seen as a dramatic event,” he writes. “Sadly, I must report that reality is far less exciting in this case. I’ve had many roles at Docker over the years, and today I have a new, final one – as an active board member, a major shareholder and, I expect, a high maintenance Docker user.”

In Hykes telling, Docker is simply in a position where it can now run without him. “Today, as I turn 34, Docker has quietly transformed into an enterprise business with explosive revenue growth and a developer community in the millions, under the leadership of our CEO, the legendary Steve Singh,” he writes.

Indeed, it’s this enterprise focus that will likely keep Docker, which has raised closed to $250 million, going for the foreseeable future. The company had its ups and downs, with many a pundit expecting it to shut down or sell at various junctures, but it has quietly plotted its way forward over the course of the last two years, even as the container hype now mostly focuses on the Google-led Kubernetes project, a technology Docker itself adopted in recent months.

To make the most of this enterprise opportunity, Hykes argues, the company needs the right CTO to assist Singh. “So I now have a new role: to help find that ideal CTO, provide the occasional bit of advice, and get out of the team’s way as they continue to build a juggernaut of a business. As a shareholder, I couldn’t be happier to accept this role,” writes Hykes.

Hykes says he will remain and active board member and shareholder, but I don’t expect we’ll see him at DockerCon, the company’s developer conference, in June. Instead, Hykes says he plans to refocus on his family, friends and the company he advises and invests in.