Codean

Based in Utrecht, Netherlands, Codean was established in 2020 by co-founders Arthur Tolsma and Kevin Valk. The company's inception was driven by the founders' dissatisfaction with the existing toolsets available for security experts, which often led to procedural inefficiencies. Valk, who serves as CEO, brings a deep background in cybersecurity, with a Master of Science in Computer Security from Radboud University and prior roles as a Senior Security Analyst and Cyber Security Consultant. This hands-on experience in identifying security vulnerabilities directly informed the company's mission.

Codean operates in the application security market, targeting clients such as whitebox penetration testers, security auditors, and developers who need to perform in-depth code reviews. The company's business model is centered on its primary product, the Codean Review Environment, which is offered as a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) platform, with an on-premise solution available for clients who require it. To fuel its growth, Codean secured a seed funding round of $1.09 million on April 12, 2022, led by TIIN Capital, and also received a €400,000 grant from the European Union's REACT-EU program to further develop its platform.

The Codean Review Environment is a collaborative platform designed to make the work of software security experts more efficient. It functions as a specialized Integrated Development Environment (IDE) tailored for security analysis rather than software development. Key features include 'codemarks' for annotating source code, delta analysis to review changes between versions, taint analysis to trace potentially malicious data flows, and collaborative tools that show team progress in real-time. The platform aims to automate mundane analysis tasks, allowing experts to focus on complex vulnerability discovery, thereby increasing their speed and the quality of their security assessments. In addition to its SaaS product, Codean offers consultancy services through Codean Labs, providing penetration testing and security reviews for clients.

Keywords: application security, code review platform, cybersecurity, penetration testing, vulnerability analysis, software security, ethical hacking, security assessment, taint analysis, secure development, source code analysis, DevSecOps, security automation, collaborative security, whitebox testing, security IDE, application security testing, code analysis tools, security review, software auditing