Cybersecurity is a huge market: Valued at $153 billion in 2020, it is projected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 12% to reach $366 billion by 2028, according to Fortune Business Insights.

The growth is bolstered by a high-profile challenge. The rise in cloud adoption and remote work has increased the attack surface, and massive data breaches have become regular news. Companies deploy battalions of point solutions, but rules-based engines that set out to identify and stop the bad guys weren’t created to monitor trillions of data points dispersed across hybrid environments.

It’s time for disruption.

“I’ve always bought into the thesis that security is fundamentally a data problem. And if you can get the data problem and the data processing right, you can fundamentally change the industry,” said David Hatfield (pictured), chief executive officer of Lacework Inc.

In anticipation of the AWS Startup Showcase: The Next Big Thing in Security, AI and Life Sciences — set to kick off on June 16th — John Furrier, host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio, spoke with Hatfield for a special CUBE Conversation on how cybersecurity startup Lacework is setting out to change the industry paradigm. (* Disclosure below.)

Cybersecurity designed to work like cloud

“Think data science meets cloud security,” said Hatfield, describing Lacework’s drive to provide a single machine-learning infused software-as-a-service platform that secures across multiple cloud platforms. The company has patented it’s data-driven approach to security, which is based on a set of behavioral maps known as polygraphs.

“We did the hard work of mapping the data elements that are out there and ingesting them in,” Hatfield told Furrier, describing how the Lacework platform works. The polygraphs then perform behavioral anomaly detection, which today is applied to “vulnerability and discovery management and containers and Kubernetes,” Hatfield added.

However, as the platform matures its abilities will extend to apply to a larger part of the attack surface, according to Hatfield. “We don’t have to rewrite the data engine to develop solutions across broader attack surface. We already have that,” he said. “So I think our time to develop and innovate will be profound.”

Being born-in-the-cloud is another way Lacework differs from traditional security platforms, according to Hatfield. “We’re a cloud native business that runs our business on AWS. We don’t have hardware; we don’t own data centers; we don’t have any of the legacy elements that are there,” he said. “We use software run on the cloud to enable this.”

The third advantage Lacework has mirrors how a small startup like Pure Storage Inc. is competing with industry giants such as Dell Technologies Inc.

“[Pure] went after a platform approach to be able to go attack [Dell EMC] with a unified file system in a unified customer experience that was native for the media that we’re working with,” Hatfield said. “We’re doing the same playbook here, which is you have to have the hard work of the foundation elements in place to be cloud native to deliver great outcomes, great efficacy and a really great customer experience.”

Lacework follows the success formula for cloud-native disruption

Hatfield’s knowledge of Pure’s strategy comes from personal experience. He took the reins of Lacework in February 2021 after eight years at the helm of Pure, seeing an opportunity to disrupt security using the same model he applied with Pure.

“[It’s a] combination of tailoring the motion that we have, making it really easy for the buyer to buy what they want with whom they want from whom they want … and then just spreading a value proposition,” he said. “That is a no-brainer.”

Sutter Hill Ventures is betting on Lacework’s chances, backing the company with funding to the tune of $525 million. This puts Lacework alongside Pure and Snowflake Inc. as model-disrupting companies backed by the venture capital firm.

“Sutter’s focus is find a really big market and find a catalyst for change,” Hatfield said. “In our case, it’s moving to the cloud and then build a modern approach that is 10x better in every dimension.”

Currently valued at just over a billion dollars, Lacework is on target for a 300% year-over-year growth, on an undisclosed base, according to Hatfield.

“We just had finished a phenomenal record-breaking first quarter with multiple seven-figure deals with very complex global environments where they have a hybrid environment and they are leveraging the edge,” he said, describing Lacework as “perfect” for hybrid and multicloud scenarios. But while the platform brings benefits to businesses, it was designed for the most important people within a company – the DevOps teams.

“It’s really the development communities and the builders who we’re changing security for,” Hatfield stated. “We built our platform and our solutions for builders because that’s where the money is, that’s where the pain point is, and they want to build secure code.”

Here’s the complete video interview, part of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s CUBE Conversations, and tune in to theCUBE’s live coverage of AWS Startup Showcase: The Next Big Thing in Security, AI and Life Sciences on June 16. (* Disclosure: Lacework sponsored this CUBE Conversation. Neither Lacework nor other sponsors have editorial control over the content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE