Evident.io

Evident.io was established in 2013 by co-founders Tim Prendergast and Justin Lundy, who served as CEO and CTO, respectively. The founders leveraged their deep domain expertise from previous roles, including at Adobe, where they were instrumental in the company's transition to the cloud. This firsthand experience of the security challenges in cloud environments directly shaped the company's mission.

The company developed the Evident Security Platform (ESP), a service designed for security and compliance automation within public cloud infrastructures. This platform catered to organizations using services like Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure, enabling them to continuously monitor their cloud deployments. ESP operated by analyzing the configurations of all services and account settings against established security and compliance controls, such as CIS, HIPAA, and PCI. Its primary function was to help clients identify security misconfigurations, assess risks, and receive expert guidance on remediation, all managed from a single dashboard. The business model was centered on providing these cloud security services, which included features like resource visibility, vulnerability assessments, and compliance reporting. The platform was agent-less, built on AWS APIs, allowing for rapid deployment into complex environments.

Evident.io secured significant financial backing, raising a total of $49.1 million over four funding rounds from investors including Venrock, True Ventures, and Google Ventures. The company's trajectory culminated in its acquisition by Palo Alto Networks on March 14, 2018, for a cash price of $300 million. Following the acquisition, the Evident.io platform was integrated into Palo Alto Networks' cloud security offerings to provide a more holistic approach to continuous monitoring, storage security, and compliance validation.

Keywords: cloud security, compliance automation, public cloud infrastructure, AWS security, Azure security, cloud infrastructure security, Evident Security Platform, Tim Prendergast, Justin Lundy, Palo Alto Networks acquisition, cloud compliance, continuous monitoring, security misconfiguration, risk assessment, vulnerability management, API-based security, DevOps security, infrastructure as a service security, cloud governance, security policy enforcement