Smallstep’s Groundbreaking Device Security: Lessons in Standards, Scale, and Startup Wins

Episode notes

Are you struggling to convince enterprise buyers to trust your early-stage cybersecurity startup? Wondering how to differentiate technical innovation in a crowded market? Curious about how device identity and hardware-bound credentials can change the sales conversation? In this exciting episode, we dive deep into device identity and discuss what it takes to build trust and credibility for a new security standard—directly from a finalist of the RSA Conference Innovation Sandbox. In this conversation we discuss: The challenges and opportunities of tying access controls to hardware for higher security and easier enterprise adoption How Smallstep’s collaboration with Google led to a new security standard that major vendors like Apple are adopting Lessons for founders on selling to Fortune 500s and scaling enterprise relationships from the ground up About our guest: Mike Malone is the CEO and founder of Smallstep, a device identity platform company. With a background in engineering and extensive experience in standards development (including collaborations with Google, Apple, and more), Mike shares real go-to-market stories and hard-earned lessons from building in cybersecurity.