Startup Accurics Inc. has picked up $20 million in funding for its namesake automation platform, which aims to make the popular “infrastructure as code” approach to managing enterprise cloud environments more reliable and secure. 

The financing was announced today. Pleasanton, California-based Accurics raised it in two tranches over the past six months: a Series A round led by Intel Corp.’s Intel Capital investment arm and a seed round led by ClearSky.

Infrastructure as code is the term for a popular approach to running enterprise cloud environments. Whereas in the past, infrastructure resources such as virtual machines would be provisioned by hand, information technology teams are now increasingly using scripts to automate the process. The scripts control how an application is run on a day-to-day basis, adding or removing hardware resources according to demand while also making configuration changes as needed.

This approach introduces certain risks into the cloud management equation. Because of the complexity of enterprise applications, it’s difficult to create a script that takes every potential failure and breach scenario into account. As a result, weak points can emerge that have the potential to increase the risk of outages or create an attack surface for hackers to exploit.

Accurics’ answer is an approach it calls “remediation as code.” The startup’s platform detects weak points such as insecure Kubernetes settings, then automatically generates code that IT teams can add to their infrastructure as code scripts to fix the issue. Engineers only have to review the generated code and release it to production via their team’s deployment tool of choice.

Accurics’ platform finds issues by comparing cloud infrastructure against 500-plus rules that define security and configuration best practices. Enterprises can also build their own rules using a customization tool built into the platform. 

“Existing solutions focus on detecting vulnerabilities and violations, but that is not sufficient for true resilience,” said Accurics co-founder and Chief Executive Sachin Aggarwal. “You must be able to codify response and remediation as well.”

This kind of automation, Aggarwal added, can remove barriers to enterprise cloud adoption. “When you can trust your infrastructure to remain secure, you are freed to embrace the cloud and innovate more rapidly,” he said.

Accurics says its platform is used by customers that include Automation Anywhere Inc., the NBA and ServiceMax. The startup will use the $20 million in funding to hire more employees and build out more features. 

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