INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Highly sought-after federal software contracts frequently come with a hidden cost: Achieving government SaaS security compliance, known as
FedRAMP, can take years and require substantial resources.Achieving this certification typically takes up to three years and costs more than
$3 million, covering everything from security operations engineer salaries to security audits, according to Irina Denisenko, CEO of
Knox.Denisenko (pictured above, second from right) launched Knox, a federal managed cloud provider, last year with a mission to help
software vendors speed through this security authorization process in just three months, and at a fraction of what it would cost to do it on
their own.On Thursday, Knox said it has raised a $6.5 million seed round led by Felicis, with participation from Ridgeline and
FirsthandVC.Denisenko decided to embark on this journey after she learned firsthand the challenges of obtaining FedRAMP
Class, an education startup where she served as COO, had secured a contract to sell its software to the U.S
And instead of waiting three years and spending millions, Denisenko helped Class.com buy CoSo Cloud, a company that was already FedRAMP
late last year, when it became clear that the proliferation of AI agents was becoming a national security concern, Denisenko decided to spin
out the managed cloud solution into a standalone startup, Knox.Companies that can afford FedRAMP certification include large software
vendors like CrowdStrike, Palo Alto Networks, and Salesforce, Denisenko told A Technology NewsRoom
And as the government increasingly adopts more software, she hopes Knox can help SaaS vendors gain FedRAMP to access government contracts
more easily.Knox, named after a giant gold-storage fort in Kentucky, essentially provides a compliance management platform via a managed
cloud that customers can connect their codebase to
controls are falling short of FedRAMP standards, and either remediates those issues itself or flags them to the customer
since then, the giant data analysis platform has brought on the likes of Anthropic and Windsurf as clients
she said, adding that going forward, software companies will want to outsource their FedRAMP compliance to a company like Knox.
