Operators.
Not vendors.
Kodiak Defense was founded by analysts and engineers who built and ran security operations for Fortune 500 banks, hospitals, and logistics firms. We left to bring that same caliber of defense to the businesses that actually need it most - and rarely get it.
Founded in defense.
Operating in business.
Est. 2021 · Columbus, OH
We started Kodiak in 2021 after spending a combined three decades inside the security operations centers of large enterprises. The work was rewarding - but every time a friend ran a 60-person company and asked for help, we hit the same wall. The tools they needed cost six figures, the consultants spoke in slides, and nobody stayed long enough to actually operate anything.
So we built the firm we wished existed when we picked up those phone calls. A single accountable team. The same telemetry stack we used to defend banks, sized and priced for a 200-person business. Named analysts who answer the phone - not a queue, not a chatbot, not a junior MSP technician who's been on the job for six weeks.
Five years in, we operate 24/7 across roughly 200 SMB networks in healthcare, financial services, manufacturing, and SaaS. We've contained ransomware mid-detonation, rebuilt identity perimeters in six weeks, and shipped clients through SOC 2, HIPAA, and PCI audits with no material findings. We didn't get here by pitching fear. We got here by engineering outcomes.
Three principles.
No exceptions.
These aren't posters in a hallway. They are the filters we use when hiring analysts, writing detections, and deciding which clients are a fit.
Engineered, not pitched
Security is a discipline, not a sales motion. We deliver outcomes you can measure - fewer incidents, faster containment, cleaner audits - not slide decks about the threat landscape.
Operators first
Every senior on our team has owned a real incident at 2am. We don't hire consultants who have only read about ransomware - we hire the analysts who have stayed up nights stopping it.
Plain English
Every report we write can be read by a CEO without a glossary. We translate exploit chains into business risk, and explain what we did, why we did it, and what it cost - every month.
The people
behind the program.
Senior analysts, incident responders, and security engineers with first-hand experience defending Fortune 500 environments - now applied to yours.
Daniel Mercer
Former SOC Lead at a $50B financial services firm. 15 years running detection and response programs for regulated industries.
Priya Raman
Former Principal Security Engineer at a major cloud provider. Built detection pipelines that processed 4 trillion events per day.
Marcus Okafor
Led the 24/7 SOC at a top-five US hospital system. GCIH, GCFA. Specializes in healthcare incident response and HIPAA-aligned forensics.
Elena Castillo
OSCP, OSEP, CRTO. Eight years on the red team at a global consultancy. Has broken into more banks than most analysts have audited.
Find out if we're a fit.
Most engagements start with a 45-minute call. You explain what you're defending, we explain how we'd defend it. No slides, no pressure, no follow-up cadence from sales.