Swimlane automates cybersecurity solutions

LOUISVILLE — In some respects, the incredible expansion of Swimlane Inc., which automates cybersecurity, doesn’t surprise its co-founder and chief strategy officer Cody Cornell.

“People in this field are largely overworked, and they are telling us what we’ve done is very innovative,” Cornell said. “There’s no silver bullet for it (cybersecurity), and this brings all the solutions together.”

Swimlane saw about a 38% increase in revenue, from 2021 to 2023, which put its annual revenue to be well more than $25 million. Part of that is the company’s innovation, Cornell said, but a great deal is the overall growth in the industry.

Cornell said that 25 years ago, cybersecurity consisted of firewalls, virus protection, and in more advanced applications, encryption — “that was the culmination of security.”

Flash forward to today with a huge increase of effort and capital that has to be thrown at cybersecurity. Swimlane is providing a method of saving security efforts the time and effort of keeping data safe, both in the U.S. and internationally.

Swimlane focuses on an automated solution that relieves security experts, rather than  to burden them with more responsibility. Their continually improved products are apparently also aimed at easy to use solutions, which ease, rather than increase, the workload on cyber security experts.

“The companies we are  with, and many are government agencies, are probably running in excess of 100 applications,” Cornell said. “It’s a hard problem made very easy (by Swimlane’s automation).”

Swimlane is often cited as an international leader in security automation, receiving industry acclaim for its constant innovation. The company’s low-code automation was enhanced in January with the introduction of artificial intelligence to its Turbine platform.

Swimlane’s continued improvements often focus on its ease of use. Two such improvements were announced to the Turbine platform this January, Turbine Canvas and Hero AI.

Canvas allows security automation processes to be planned and built with modular and reusable components, often without coding. Hero AI allows for AI-enhanced innovations to Swimlane’s own large language model and can use text to build Python code, helping analysts to work faster and more effectively.

Swimlane is used by more than 40 Fortune 500 companies, 26 U.S. federal agencies, and five of the top 10 global solutions integrators, according to company information. The company has been ranked No. 24 among cybersecurity companies on the Deloitte Technology Fast 500, where it has been ranked in the top 30 of its field in North America for the past two years.

A prepared statement from Swimlane CEO James Brear noted that the company’s position in the region’s tech economy is also important to the firm.

“Colorado’s cutting-edge tech scene is a perfect ecosystem for fast-growing startups like Swimlane,” Brear said. “We’re honored to see BizWest recognize Swimlane’s impressive growth. Our customers see immediate results — up and running in a day, tangible benefits within two weeks, and an average 240% ROI in the first year — which is the driving force behind our progress.”

Brear said Swimlane is “the largest and fastest-growing pure-play security automation company,” leading the industry with human-centric AI and automation-building. At its Louisville headquarters, Swimlane has 28 employees, but Cornell said the company now has more than 250 employees around the globe.

“We call Colorado our secret weapon,” Cornell said, noting the amazing talent in the Boulder County tech economy. In addition, the company also pulls security experts from the Colorado Springs veteran community.

“We kind of get the best of both worlds,” he said.

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