Hello World, Meet Laminar

Data protection at the speed of cloud

There are rare moments while working on a problem when a much more significant, fundamental problem arises. When this happens, you drop everything and dedicate yourself to the issue that matters most. This is the story of how we founded Laminar.

Right before the pandemic hit in 2020, I was leading the project to develop Magic Leap’s first cloud API. Our API’s input data was everything the user could hear and see while wearing our AR device. Probably the most sensitive personal data one can imagine. We knew that this project would never see the light of day without best-in-class data security and privacy, so I started looking for off-the-shelf solutions. We had a standard cloud infrastructure setup, along with modern application architecture, yet when trying to ensure our users’ data security and privacy, I could not find any solution for preventing data leakage and exfiltration from the cloud.

Faced with an unsolved technical problem, I went about solving it the same way I had since age 14: I asked my friend Oran (now my co-founder and CTO at Laminar) what he recommended. At the time, Oran was the first employee and Chief Architect at Medigate. They had the same problem in a completely different industry, handling health information, and there was no good solution for it.

“data protection has fallen behind in the data democratization movement”

We then spoke with over one hundred CISOs about this problem and their attempts to solve it, and the universal feedback from these conversations was simple, clear, and very consistent: data protection has fallen behind in the data democratization movement, and security teams must find a way to gain control without slowing down the business. The cloud infrastructure transformation amplified that when it made development way easier and data protection way harder. Security teams have lost control of where their sensitive data is, who has access to it, and where the data is going. Without visibility, traditional data security policies could not be transferred to the public cloud infrastructure, and they had no way of detecting data leakage from this new environment.

We knew it didn’t have to be this way. We envisioned a different kind of world, where data protection could move at the speed of cloud and become an enabler for the organization. We felt that data security should ambiently fit into the day-to-day fabric of cloud development and seamlessly speak the same language developers do. We felt that data protection teams too deserve a solution that is cloud-native by nature: agentless, asynchronous, frictionless.

“We envisioned a different kind of world, where data protection could move at the speed of cloud“

It was time for a change. We dropped everything, left our jobs, and founded Laminar with a clear mission in mind: enabling organizations to unleash the full potential of data securely and transparently. Where data can have laminar flow and not be interrupted or held back by security measures, but yet still be protected. We have developed the industry’s first cloud-native data protection platform for organizations that process sensitive data in a public cloud environment. Laminar delivers complete data observability across the entire cloud stack, allowing customers to continuously Discover and Classify data for complete visibility, Secure and Control data to improve risk posture as well as Detect Leaks and Remediate without interrupting data flow. Both agentless and asynchronous monitoring of data stores, compute and data egress channels allowing sanctioned data movement and alerting when something’s wrong. Data protection teams can reduce the attack surface, detect real-time data leaks and be back in control of their data.

“we founded Laminar with a clear mission in mind: enabling organization to unleash the full potential of data securely and transparently”

I am lucky enough to have Oran – one of the world’s leading security experts and a four-time Google Capture The Flag (CTF) winner – as my lifelong friend. Together, we quickly built a fantastic team of incredibly talented individuals. We have all been innovating together for a year in a truly magical environment. We all came to the office every day over the last year, just because it was so much fun working together.

At Laminar, we are also proud to be backed by Insight Partners. Our ability to use their vast network and meet with hundreds of Global 2000 executives to get a better understanding of the problem and the market before we designed the perfect solution continues to be invaluable.

As we embark on this journey together, I look forward to sharing more about Laminar’s vision, product, market momentum, culture, and values. For now, I invite you to check out our Company Manifesto and some of the assets on our website. If we can help you protect your data in the new public cloud environment, please reach out. We’d love to talk with you.

Hello World, meet Laminar.

We are enabling data protection at the speed of cloud.

Amit Shaked