Why Zatik?

 

Decades of research shows that security is better when built in, not bolted on. But for startups and small-to-medium sized companies, the way forward isn’t clear or simple. Knowing little more than, “We need to do some security things”, many companies don’t know where to start and waste time and money investing in the wrong things.
 

At least, that’s what Kymberlee Price found after twenty years of experience creating security teams. Price, who has built teams at some of the largest technology companies as well as several successful startups, kept getting contacted by companies looking to make their first security hire, seeking a jack of all trades with 5-10 years’ experience that could define a strategic roadmap and report to the board as well as be hands on in vulnerability remediation or configuring SSO...  "These companies know they need security, but they don't really know what that means or how to build an effective security practice", Price said. "And realistically they don’t need someone like me full time. They would be much better served with a fractional model: a team of several part time subject matter experts." Rather than hire one person juggling strategy, technical implementation across IT and product, and communications, what these companies really need is a fractional security team of specialists.
 

And so, Zatik Security was born. Founded in October 2023 upon the belief that effective cybersecurity should not be out of reach for any company, Zatik helps clients incubate their first security program, baking security and privacy into their engineering practices from the start. When the time comes for Clients to make their first full-time security hire, they are set up for success with an established security engineering culture and roadmap.
 

In creating Zatik Security, Price with her co-founders, Zack Glick and Jon Callas, pulled together a team of career cybersecurity experts from across multiple specialties. The team that supports each customer is then tailored to the customer’s needs and, since none of its customers are large enough to require any of these subject matter experts full-time, Zatik’s staff can split their time—and their cost—across multiple small and medium businesses. Zatik’s team works with customers to create sustainable secure development experiences tailored to each customer’s needs.

Zatik’s goal is to help small companies integrate Security in their developer workflow more effectively than traditional DevSecOps approaches, by focusing on the developer user experience - something they call the Secure Developer eXperience, or SDX. Zatik experts assess each clients’ unique tech stack and security posture, provide a prioritized roadmap for security investments, and offer fractional staff augmentation for cost-effective engineering implementation. And while Zatik’s core mission is to help small and medium sized companies, they have also attracted large enterprise customers who want help reducing friction between their security and engineering teams and adopting SDX principles to work Better Together.

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