The majority of you likely heard about the high-profile cybersecurity attacks on SolarWinds and Colonial Pipeline earlier this year. They are part of an increasing and alarming trend, among the thousands of cyber-attacks that have occurred in 2021 alone. But these incidents only offer a peek at the tsunami of cyber-attacks that have occurred since the start of the pandemic. Nowadays, a cyber-attack is expected every 11 seconds.
Growing cyber threats is one of the contributing factors accelerating companies transitioning to the cloud whereby IT functions are shifted from on-premise data centers to public cloud providers. In addition to providing advanced security features, cloud services offer greater scalability, easier accessibility, improved team collaboration, remote work enablement, elimination of hardware costs, and effectively unlimited storage capacity. In 2020, 40% of all enterprise workloads were already deployed into the cloud infrastructure; by 2023, that share is projected to be 70%.
Contain Yourself
Unlike programming in most legacy data centers, the way work gets done in the cloud involves using containers – essentially virtual packages of software that include all of the elements of code needed to run in either a private data center, the public cloud, or even on someone’s laptop. They are the cloud’s building blocks that enable software to run reliably, even when it’s moved from one computing environment to another. Containers are highly scalable, and they allow development teams to move quickly, which explains why all of the world’s top technology companies use them and why Gartner forecasts that 85% of companies will do so by 2025.
In essence, working in the cloud involves using a whole new computing ecosystem, but it is hard for anyone to see what’s going on inside its containers. Their dynamic nature with an average lifespan of just 5 minutes makes containers vulnerable to external attack, particularly if their users have not configured them correctly. And beyond the lack of visibility into containers, legacy on-premise security tools simply cannot handle the dynamics of Kubernetes – a widely-used tool for grouping multiple containers in forming an application – or in scaling across multi-cloud deployments.
Addressing this critical security gap between today’s fast-growing adoption of container technologies and the comparatively slower growth of tools to manage them is what initially attracted us to Sysdig. Sysdig was founded in 2013 to monitor cloud-native services, and over the last several years, successfully added security and remediation to its offerings. The market opportunity is massive, with the cloud security market currently valued at approximately $35 billion. Today, Sysdig is a global leader in securing containers – the foundational workbenches of this new cloud ecosystem.
The Open Source Ecosystem
In creating its end-to-end platform for securing this new foundation, Sysdig developed Falco, the leading runtime container security tool, and subsequently released it to the open-source community. With over 37 million downloads, Falco helped establish Sysdig as an influential force in the global developer community. What Sysdig has done is create a type of freeware which users can download today. Some companies will only use Falco, choosing to DIY their IT stack. However, most organizations look for a commercial solution as they scale and will upgrade to the Sysdig platform.
An important feature of the Sysdig system is its fluidity. It not only provides visibility and security for cloud-based containers, but it also offers those same benefits across multi-cloud, hybrid and on-premise environments. That means it can work in a variety of technical ecosystems, which is part of the reason it has amassed a number of top enterprise customers including Goldman Sachs, Experian, Worldpay by FIS, IBM, SAP Concur and Yahoo Japan.
Looking Ahead
We first met Sysdig’s CEO Suresh Vasudevan last year and quickly realized that Sysdig sits at the intersection of several key themes within cybersecurity – cloud migration, container adoption and open source. So when the opportunity to invest and help Sysdig scale to the next level surfaced, we were ready to execute quickly and seized the opportunity.
What Sysdig saw in Permira is a partner who comes with deep sector expertise, a global footprint, proven success in scaling enterprise SaaS businesses and resources to support go-to-market execution – a perfect fit for Sysdig’s growth aspirations. We are truly delighted to lead this funding round and partner with Suresh and the Sysdig team to help make the digital world a more secure place for everyone.
Key Takeaways:
- Containers are the building blocks of the cloud, and cloud applications are growing rapidly.
- Security has emerged as a high priority for cloud users; it is where buyers expect the biggest spending increase
- Sysdig is driving the standard for cloud security, empowering organizations to confidently secure containers, Kubernetes, and cloud services. Only Sysdig gives you real-time visibility at scale eliminating security blind spots
With new investment from Permira, Sysdig will be able to:
- Expand its GTM organization
- Leverage Permira’s value creation resources to enhance its marketing effectiveness
- Expand in the EMEA and APAC market regions
- Continue to extend functionality of the Sysdig platform
