Lacework

Lacework is a cloud security company that aims to provide a unified platform for protecting cloud-native applications, data, and infrastructure. Lacework’s mission is to enable organizations to innovate with speed and safety by automating cloud security at scale. The company focuses on delivering security solutions for DevOps, workloads, and cloud containers, helping businesses secure their operations on public clouds like Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform, as well as hybrid and private cloud environments.

A core goal for Lacework is to help customers embrace security as an enabler of innovation rather than a blocker. Lacework strives to achieve this by providing visibility into threats and vulnerabilities across an organization’s entire cloud environment through a single platform. The company emphasizes a data-driven approach, utilizing machine learning and behavioral analytics to detect and respond to security incidents in real-time without requiring manual rule creation. Lacework aims to reduce security risks, improve productivity, and deliver cost savings for its customers.

In the market, Lacework is recognized as a data-driven cloud security company. It is known for its Cloud-Native Application Protection Platform (CNAPP) which offers capabilities such as threat detection, compliance automation, and vulnerability management. Customer reviews often highlight Lacework’s ability to provide comprehensive visibility into cloud infrastructure and facilitate threat detection. While some users note an initial learning curve, the platform is generally regarded for its ease of use once configured. Lacework was acquired by Fortinet in June 2024.

Offerings, Capabilities, and Integrations

Lacework offers a data-driven cloud security platform designed to automate security at scale, enabling businesses to innovate with speed and safety. Its core strength lies in its Polygraph Data Platform, which utilizes machine learning and behavioral analytics to provide comprehensive visibility and threat detection across multi-cloud environments, including AWS, Azure, GCP, and Kubernetes. This approach allows Lacework to detect known and unknown threats, vulnerabilities, and misconfigurations by establishing a baseline of normal behavior and identifying deviations. Lacework’s platform is engineered for end-to-end security, covering configuration management, compliance monitoring, threat detection, and vulnerability assessment. This automated, data-driven methodology, which analyzes vast amounts of cloud activity data in real-time, gives Lacework a competitive edge by reducing the manual effort typically required for security monitoring and enabling proactive security measures. Lacework’s ability to integrate with a wide range of cloud services and infrastructure, as well as CI/CD tools and notification platforms like Slack and Jira, enhances its adaptability and ease of use for security and DevOps teams.

Products and Services

Lacework’s flagship offering is the Lacework Cloud Security Platform, powered by its Polygraph Data Platform. This platform provides a suite of services aimed at securing cloud environments from build time to runtime.

• Cloud Native Application Protection Platform (CNAPP): This comprehensive platform offers a unified view of cloud security, encompassing capabilities like Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM), Cloud Workload Protection Platform (CWPP), vulnerability management, and threat detection. It helps identify vulnerabilities, misconfigurations, and exposed secrets before deployment and monitors runtime environments.
• Polygraph Data Platform: The core technology that underpins Lacework’s offerings. It uses machine learning and behavioral analytics to automatically discover workloads, applications, users, and their interactions to detect anomalies and threats.
• Vulnerability Management: Scans and identifies vulnerabilities in operating systems of cloud workloads and container images. This includes scanning Infrastructure as Code (IaC) templates.
• Threat Detection: Identifies known and unknown threats by analyzing behavior and detecting anomalies. It provides high-precision alerts and simplifies investigation analysis.
• Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM): Automates configuration compliance and helps maintain adherence to various security standards and frameworks.
• Infrastructure as Code (IaC) Security: Acquired through Soluble, this capability allows developers to find and fix security issues in code before deployment, supporting tools like Terraform, AWS CloudFormation, and Kubernetes.
• Cloud Infrastructure Entitlement Management (CIEM): Correlates user identity and resource permissions to identify excessive permissions and potential vulnerabilities.
• Attack Path Analysis: Identifies and prioritizes potential exploit chains and multi-faceted attacks.
• Lacework Edge: A newer Security Service Edge (SSE) product that extends Lacework’s security capabilities to users and networks at the edge. It provides zero-trust connectivity, securing access from any user or device to internet applications, private data centers, and SaaS applications.
• Agent-based and Agentless Monitoring: Lacework provides agents for host-based data collection and also offers agentless capabilities for broader cloud visibility.
• Integrations: Lacework integrates with various third-party tools and platforms, including major cloud providers (AWS, Azure, GCP), CI/CD tools, and notification services like Slack and Jira.

Target Customers

Lacework’s target customers are primarily cloud-native organizations that utilize one or more public clouds such as AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform, or operate in hybrid/private cloud environments. These organizations typically require solutions to proactively secure their cloud environments at scale, manage vulnerabilities, detect and remediate issues, ensure compliance, and identify threats through an intuitive interface. Lacework caters to companies across various industries, including computer software, information technology and services, and internet companies. Customers range from mid-market organizations to large enterprises. These customers benefit from Lacework’s platform by gaining automated and continuous visibility into their cloud security posture, reducing the complexity of managing multiple point security solutions, and enabling their security and DevOps teams to work more efficiently. The platform helps them to innovate faster and more securely by automating security processes, prioritizing risks, and providing actionable insights to address threats and vulnerabilities.

Cloud Integrations and Marketplaces

Lacework offers a range of cloud integrations and maintains a presence on major cloud marketplaces, enabling customers to secure their cloud environments and streamline procurement.

• Amazon Web Services (AWS) Integrations: Lacework provides deep integration with AWS services. This includes integration with AWS Control Tower for seamless multi-account security and automated deployment across AWS accounts. Lacework also integrates with AWS Security Hub, pushing security events from the Lacework Polygraph Data Platform to Security Hub for a consolidated view of AWS posture and compliance events. The platform is designed to audit AWS configurations, find IAM vulnerabilities, check logging best practices, and monitor critical account activity. Lacework offers Terraform modules for integrating with AWS Configuration and CloudTrail.
• AWS Marketplace: Lacework is available on the AWS Marketplace. This allows AWS customers to find, test, buy, and deploy Lacework’s security platform. Lacework also participates in offering professional services through the AWS Marketplace, helping customers implement, support, and manage their software on AWS.
• Google Cloud Platform (GCP) Integrations: Lacework has expanded its partnership with Google Cloud, allowing customers to leverage the Lacework platform on Google Cloud. This includes features like low-latency ingestion of Google Cloud audit logs, Agentless Workload Scanning for Google Cloud, Attack Path Analysis for Google Cloud, and integration with Google Eventarc. Lacework also integrates with Google Cloud’s Chronicle Security Operations, bringing its CNAPP capabilities to Chronicle deployments for enhanced threat detection and response. A Pub/Sub-based Google Cloud audit log integration is available for faster alerting on anomalous behavior.
• Google Cloud Marketplace: The Lacework Polygraph Data Platform is available on the Google Cloud Marketplace, enabling customers to purchase and integrate the platform into their Google Cloud environment.
• Microsoft Azure Integrations: Lacework provides security automation for Microsoft Azure, offering a comprehensive view of risks across cloud workloads. Lacework offers Terraform modules for integrating Azure Subscriptions and Tenants for cloud resource configuration assessment and for Activity Log analysis. It also provides a Terraform module for configuring Agentless Scanning on Azure. Docker images are available to help configure Azure accounts with the Lacework service. Documentation is available for various Azure integration methods, including using Terraform or manual configurations via the Azure portal.
• Microsoft Azure Marketplace: Lacework is available on the Microsoft Azure Marketplace, allowing customers to procure and deploy its solutions within their Azure environment.
• Other Integrations: Lacework integrates with various other platforms and tools to enhance its security capabilities and streamline workflows. This includes integrations with PagerDuty for event routing and incident response, and Panther for collecting, normalizing, and monitoring Lacework logs. Lacework also integrates with Salesforce Data Cloud through Workato for workflow automation. Red Canary offers Managed Detection and Response (MDR) for Lacework, ingesting event and alert data from Lacework’s Polygraph Platform.

Key People

• Chief Executive Officer and Board Member: Jay Parikh
• Founder, Chief Technical Officer & Board Member: Vikram Kapoor
• Chief Financial Officer: Andrew Casey
• Chief Marketing Officer: Meagen Eisenberg
• Chief Legal Officer and Corporate Secretary: Joe Fitzgerald
• Chief Information Security Officer: Lea Kissner
• Chief Revenue Officer: Kevin Kiley
• Vice President of Product: Adam Leftik
• Vice President of People: Shweta Vohra
• Vice President of Business Operations and Programs: Lindsay Folk
• Vice President of Engineering: Arash Nikkar

Key Facts

• Headquarters Location: Mountain View, CA.
• Number of Employees: Approximately 700-750.
• Annual Revenue: Approximately $70 million – $100 million.
• Parent Company: Fortinet.
• Subsidiary Companies: None explicitly listed, but Lacework, Inc. itself has global subsidiaries.
• Publicly Listed: No (Acquired by Fortinet).

Analyst Recognition

Lacework has been recognized by Gartner, Forrester, and IDC in various cloud security categories.

• Gartner: Lacework was named a Representative Vendor in the 2023 Gartner Market Guide for Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP). In the 2023 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Cloud Security Posture Management, Lacework was positioned as a Niche Player. News reports in early 2024 indicated that while Lacework aligns with Gartner’s CNAPP category, there was not yet a Magic Quadrant specifically for CNAPP.
• Forrester: In the January 2024 Forrester Wave for Cloud Workload Security, Lacework was evaluated among thirteen vendors. Forrester noted that Lacework’s agent-based protection, container runtime, and orchestrator protections were on par with competitors, but its Cloud Infrastructure Entitlement Management (CIEM), reporting, and auditing capabilities lagged. A 2022 Forrester Consulting Total Economic Impact (TEI) study on Lacework reported significant return on investment and cost savings for enterprises using its platform. An older report from September 2017, “Vendor Landscape: Cloud Workload Security Solutions Q3 2017,” also included Lacework. Following Lacework’s acquisition by Fortinet in June 2024, Forrester analysts commented on the implications for the cloud and application security market, noting it as a move towards consolidation.
• IDC: IDC has recognized Lacework in the context of Cloud Infrastructure Entitlement Management (CIEM) and cloud security. Philip Bues, Research Manager for Cloud Security at IDC, has commented on Lacework’s innovations in CIEM, noting the platform’s ability to help security teams identify overly-permissive identities and prioritize risks. IDC also noted that Lacework’s corporate endpoint security revenue and cloud workload security market share saw growth in 2021. Lacework was also listed as a vendor in the IDC Market Glance for Exposure Management, 2Q24.
• Everest Group: There is no specific mention of Lacework in the provided search results regarding recognition by Everest Group.