ARMO, today (Wednesday) announced $30 million in funding for the first end-to-end open source Kubernetes security platform led by Tiger Global and Hyperwise Ventures, with participation from existing investors, Pitango First and Peled Ventures.

Crazy for Kubernetes

Kubernetes, the open-source container orchestration solution, has become the de-facto operating system for cloud-native applications. This makes Kubernetes security more essential than ever. However, there is no open-source project that provides an out-of-the-box, end-to-end Kubernetes security solution. Current open-source Kubernetes security tools are limited, fragmented, complex to manage and monitor, and require a huge effort to generate synergies, forcing organizations into closed source proprietary solutions.

As DevOps teams are responsible for the security of Kubernetes but prefer to use an open source for it, they are left in the dark. Shauli Rozen, CEO & co-founder of ARMO stated “Companies are being forced to choose to either try to integrate several different open-source tools together or commit to a proprietary solution that you can’t adapt, access the code, influence the roadmap or contribute to.” So, there is a clear market need waiting to be met: a Kubernetes open-source security solution that is end-to-end and can fit natively into a company’s existing stack. That is why ARMO created their solution.

ARMO’s product, Kubescape, is being built as the first end-to-end open-source Kubernetes security platform. It has quickly surged in popularity, becoming one of the fastest-growing open-source Kubernetes security tools, with tens of thousands of users and more than 2,500 registered users accessing Kubescape as a cloud SaaS. ARMO is committed to building and maintaining its Kubernetes security platform as 100% end-to-end open source so that developers can collaborate on a broader range of issues, collect more knowledge and expertise, and make Kubernetes’ security far more resilient.

Kubescape scans configuration files (i.e., YAML and Helm), Kubernetes clusters and worker nodes for misconfigurations and known vulnerabilities based on NSA-CISA hardening guidance, MITRE ATT&CK and other DevOps frameworks and vulnerability databases, calculating risk scores and trends. A powerful Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) module visualizes the connection of roles and privileges between different parts of a Kubernetes cluster. All these functionalities are already offered by Kubescape. Kubescape shows developers and DevOps teams exactly why controls fail, automatically suggesting configuration fixes to improve security posture.

Vulnerability scanning snapshot

With Kubernetes continuing to grow, securing it and the infrastructure on which all modern microservice applications depend is crucial. Though it is a complex problem, ARMO is taking a crack at it. Their solution is in line with the culture of transparency and collaboration that is seen in Kubernetes as an open-source system– since Kubernetes is open source, so should Kubernetes security. With Kubescape, there is a completely open-source security solution for Kubernetes, so everyone can benefit from – and contribute to – the most secure platform available

The new capital will allow ARMO to grow by opening additional offices and hiring internationally, bringing on more developers to work on Kubescape. The company will also expand its product and marketing teams all the while investing in its open-source community, to ensure transparent and fully customizable security solutions for all Kubernetes users.

ARMO was founded in 2019 by Shauli Rozen (CEO), Leonid Sandler (CTO) and Ben Hirschberg (VP R&D). To date, they have raised $34.5 million.