About Lacework
Lacework was founded in 2015 by Sanjay Kalra, Vikram Kapoor, and Mike Speiser, based on the observation that securing modern cloud infrastructure, which can involve enormous numbers of constantly changing virtual machines, containers, and other cloud resources, is poorly suited to traditional security approaches that rely on security teams manually writing and maintaining detection rules for known attack patterns, since cloud environments generate such enormous volumes of activity and change so much more rapidly than traditional, more static on-premises infrastructure that manually maintained rule sets struggle to keep pace with legitimate configuration changes without generating overwhelming false positive alert volumes.
Lacework's core technology uses machine learning to automatically build a baseline understanding of what normal behavior looks like across a customer's specific cloud environment, then flags anomalous activity that deviates from that learned baseline as a potential security concern, an approach the company argues requires significantly less manual security rule configuration and maintenance than traditional cloud security tools, while adapting more naturally to each individual customer's specific cloud environment and usage patterns rather than relying on generic, one-size-fits-all detection rules that may not account for how a specific organization's cloud infrastructure and applications actually operate. The company's platform covers cloud workload security, container and Kubernetes security, and cloud configuration security posture management, aiming to provide comprehensive visibility and threat detection across the full range of modern cloud infrastructure components that organizations increasingly rely on. Lacework reached a peak valuation of roughly $8.3 billion following a large funding round in 2021 during the height of cybersecurity investor enthusiasm, though the company later underwent significant valuation markdowns, leadership changes, and layoffs as broader cloud security market growth and competitive dynamics evolved, ultimately being acquired by Fortinet in 2024, a networking and cybersecurity company that integrated Lacework's cloud security technology into its broader security portfolio, reflecting a common consolidation pattern among cybersecurity startups that had raised very large rounds at peak valuations during 2021.
