Will Coggins, Vice President
Tola Capital is excited to lead the $12M Series A funding of Code Intelligence
App security is shifting left
Until recently, developers were primarily focused on shipping high quality code and security was principally the domain of the security team. With the rise of DevSecOps and the fast pace of modern development cycles, this model is not sustainable, and security is increasingly becoming the responsibility of developers. Security teams are now focused on setting standards for their organizations, and development teams are responsible for ensuring that software is built securely from the ground-up.
To manage the increasing demand developers are facing, testing – both for quality and security – needs to be automated and built into the dev workflow. That said, development teams want to focus on writing code and generally do not have the capacity to manage an ecosystem of testing and code analysis tools. They want testing to happen automatically as they write and commit software.
Fuzz testing is becoming standard
Fuzz testing – a system that provides random inputs to a program, looking for errors and crashes – has a history dating back to the 1980s, but has only recently become adopted broadly by developers. Since fuzzing searches for vulnerabilities on a running application, it has low rates of false positives. In addition, it requires limited work on the developer’s part to implement a test and achieve high levels of code coverage.
Code Intelligence makes fuzz testing simple and accessible for developers with not only the most powerful fuzzing engine available, but also all the integrations needed to completely automate the process within the CI/CD pipeline. Using the Code Intelligence platform also means that teams are no longer faced with the challenges of implementing and maintaining fuzz testing through open source or multiple tools on the market.
Our partnership with Code Intelligence
Sergej Dechand and Khaled Yakdan met while researching security as PhD students at the University of Bonn in Germany. Together, with Professor Matthew Smith, they founded Code Intelligence to help build a more secure world by making fuzz testing easy and accessible for developers. What we love most about Sergej and Khaled is not just their technical depth in security, but their drive to build a team completely focused on the needs of developers.
Since founding Code Intelligence at the university, they have built the company into a team of thirty experts serving dozens of customers including Continental and Volkswagen Group. Their strong focus on both core functionality and ease of use has paid off with strong adoption in the European automotive market, helping secure critical code that powers millions of vehicles. While European companies have been first to adopt Code Intelligence, we see a global opportunity to bring easy-to-use, dependable fuzz testing to developers in all industries.
Code Intelligence is the first international investment we’ve made since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic where we were able to visit the team in person prior to closing. Spending time with Sergej, Khaled, and the team in Bonn and seeing how dynamically they work and learn together truly convinced us that Code Intelligence is ready to take the next step towards building a global business. (And visiting in person also gave us a chance to celebrate the deal with a glass or three of Bönnsch!)
We look forward to working with the Code Intelligence team in supporting their effort to scale their organization and take advantage of the global opportunity in fuzz testing.
If building the future of security testing sounds like something you would love to be a part of, check out open positions at Code Intelligence.