Introducing Cali Dog Security
This is truly an exciting (and terrifying!) time in my life.
Today I introduce the world to Cali Dog Security: a software company with its sights focused on making no-BS security products that emphasize practicality, a beautiful user experience, and making security tools affordable for anyone who needs them. The first problem we’re tackling is phishing, but much more on that later.
We’re bootstrapped with no VC involvement whatsoever, and we plan on keeping it that way. That means our customers - and only our customers - are the ones we answer to.
The creed of Cali Dog
Our core mission is simple - make security tools ubiquitous and practical.
With that, we promise to:
- Make user satisfaction our top indicator of success
- Follow the unix philosophy of doing one thing (at a time), and do it well
- Let our users be part of our product decisions wherever possible
- Deliver a no-BS user experience with a high emphasis on usability and practicality
- Deliver software at a price that’s reasonable and accessible to anyone who needs it
I’ve written about what a security organization should strive for, and much like a security team, the security tooling an IT organization uses needs to also bridge the divide between IT and users and focus on enabling organizations to get stuff done. We’re going to attempt to repair the massive gap left by terrible security tools of the past.
Current security tools suck
I subscribe to a lot of mantras - “Under promise, over deliver”, “A mistake is only really a mistake if you repeat it”, and “If you worry about small problems, you rarely have to worry about big problems”, to name a handful.
That being said, let’s talk about the current state of security software.
Plain and simple, it’s failing us as a people. Think back to a time when you’ve interacted with a piece of security software (anti-virus, email protection, etc) and had any form of a positive experience from it. Go ahead, I’ll wait.
It’s challenging to bring a time to mind because the current security product landscape is riddled with companies that sell their software not on innovative engineering and great user experience, but on FUD (fear, uncertainty, and doubt), gimmicky bullshit, and compliance box checks.
On one side you have extremely large companies churning out “new” anti-virus software yearly like a Fifa games franchise (while not even trying to attempt any real innovation), and scaring people into buying their products. The’ve become fat and complacent, so they have very little incentive or desire to innovate, and spend most of their time re-skinning the same core technology from 20 years ago.
On the other side you have a large swath of startups applying the same methodology that lead us to fund and build the smart trashcan on products that are supposed to secure user’s privacy, business-critical infrastructure, or sometimes even their lives.
I’m all for moving quickly and iterating with your users, but you can’t have a mentality of “fake it till you make it” and “move fast and break stuff” with some things - it’s irresponsible.
That being said, there are definitely a few in the industry who have done, and continue to do, absolutely amazing things (I’m looking at you, Little Snitch, Keybase.io, and Signal) and I have the utmost respect for these companies. They help bring security not to large organizations at ridiculous prices so they can check compliance boxes, but to the laymen of the world - attempting to make security more accessible for you and me.
In a world where you have IP addresses for your lightbulbs, now more than ever is a time where people need access to affordable security tooling to help guard their privacy, finances, and digital life, and the current security industry is failing us in that endeavor.
I’ll be taking a page out of the books of companies like Objective Development, Keybase.io, and Whisper Systems and dedicate my life to fighting FUD and bringing practical security to the masses.
Time to get to work!
