Karthik Krishnan, Shankar Subramaniam, and Madhu Shashanka thought they might have the engineering chops to build something to make this easier for companies. The trio had cut their teeth in cybersecurity: Years ago, Subramaniam and Shashanka had recruited Krishnan as one of the first employees at their behavioral analytics startup, Niara.

A few years after Hewlett Packard acquired Niara, the trio began sketching out ideas for an enterprise data management tool. They envisioned a product that could catalog a company’s critical data — including information stored in infrequently accessed places — and automatically flag any data that’s at risk of compromise.