Access control: Cerbos brings open source to user permission software

To help build out its team and develop a commercial product on top of the open source platform, Cerbos today announced it has raised $3.5 million in a seed round of funding led by London-based VC firm Crane. He launched Cerbos back in March alongside software engineer Charith Ellawala, who previously worked at various tech companies such as Ocado, Qubit, and Elastic. It was at Qubit where the duo encountered the problem that they are now trying to fix with Cerbos — every time a company builds a new piece of software, engineers have to develop the user permissions infrastructure from scratch. Additionally, Cerbos will offer tools for auditing, monitoring, and analysis, alongside features for chief information and security officers such as “predictive unauthorized access prevention” smarts. Cerbos’s two founders are based in London, though as with most young startups these days, the company has adopted a globally distributed approach to its hiring, with seven employees spread across the U.K., New Zealand, Turkey, and Spain.