The Story of Vali Cyber: Building the Future of Linux Security

Sometimes the most compelling startup ideas come from experiencing problems firsthand. For Vali Cyber, it started with protecting some of the most critical systems in the U.S. military.

At Kirtland Air Force Base, CTO Austin Gadient encountered a significant gap in Linux security while working on satellite systems. “The flight computers that run satellites and the servers that run ground systems for satellite networks are all Linux systems,” Austin explains. “I discovered as part of some analysis we did a different commercially available tools to try and defend these systems, that what’s out there is lacking in a lot of ways.”

The existing solutions had fundamental problems: poor portability between Linux versions, performance issues, and questionable efficacy in detecting attacks. This experience protecting mission-critical military infrastructure would shape Vali Cyber’s approach to enterprise security.

When the company launched in fall 2022, the team focused on developing a prototype that could address these core challenges. “The first thing that we wanted to do was build a Linux security product that could stop ransomware attacks specifically, and to do it in a way that was behavioral, so it wasn’t based on something called signatures,” Austin shares.

They also introduced an innovative capability called rollback, which Austin describes as crucial for mission-critical systems: “Rollback was important because it allows you to restore a system that’s been damaged back to an undamaged state… You want to have that ability to restore it and bring it back to life if something bad happens to it.”

However, the journey from prototype to market wasn’t smooth. The team initially rushed to market too quickly, learning that in enterprise security, good enough isn’t good enough. “To be able to compete with a mature product like that, your product can’t just be better. It has to be significantly better, and it has to be pretty much error and bug free,” Austin notes.

This led to developing rigorous QA processes early on, setting a higher bar for product quality before engaging with customers. The company also made a strategic decision to focus on specific types of enterprise customers rather than trying to be everything to everyone.

“We knew to really grow the company we couldn’t be solely focused on DoD,” Austin explains. “We needed to focus on enterprises… We really needed to find those enterprise organizations that had lots of Linux systems and that also had a really dire need to protect them.”

Looking ahead, Vali Cyber’s mission remains focused on protecting critical infrastructure. “I guess for me this whole company has been about protecting mission critical systems,” Austin reflects. “My goal over the next three to five years is to protect as many systems as possible. Because that means that the product is functioning well for protecting more systems. It’s not breaking things, it’s not having performance issues, and it’s actually being effective at what it’s doing.”

This vision extends beyond just growing the business. “Especially over that course of time, we’re going to see some attacks, so we’ll be able to prove the value of the product and the fact that it’s going to be stopping attacks,” Austin explains. “For me, I’m just really focused on getting as many systems protected as possible because that’s been my mission from day one with this company, is protecting mission critical systems from serious cyber attacks.”