BOSTON, November 20, 2023 — Kodex, the only complete solution for law enforcement response, raised a $10 million seed round, led by a16z with participation from Tusk Venture Partners and other strategic investors (full list below). This brings the company’s total funding to $12 million to date. With the new investment Kodex is expanding global support for enterprise customers in more than 120 countries. The company is also hiring for roles in engineering, sales, and customer success.

Prior to joining the FBI, Kodex founder Matt Donahue assumed something like Kodex already existed; namely, a standardized, secure, and transparent way for the public and private sectors to communicate. Instead, he saw behind the curtain and quickly discovered how difficult it was for companies to comply with legal obligations even when both sides are committed to the same thing – stopping abuse online and in the physical world. The breaking point for Donahue was when a counterterrorism investigation stalled because a social media company didn’t know how to appropriately or safely respond to his squad’s legal requests for sensitive information.

“That case was incredibly eye opening for me,” said Donahue, founder and CEO of Kodex. “On the outside looking in, we were seeing a multi-billion dollar company trying to be obstructive, but in reality it’s a team of well-intentioned but under-resourced people working without modern tools. Data requests are the main part of a modern investigation and I just couldn’t let myself become numb to the fact that urgent requests for data in life or death situations could come down to the equivalent of fighting a fire with a squirt gun. Neither the company nor law enforcement want that.”

Efficient Request, Response, and Compliance Procedures

Each year, millions of data requests are sent from governments and law enforcement to companies who are legally required to respond. Currently, most data requests are sent through a combination of faxes, emails, and snail mail, making it difficult for companies to verify, track, and respond to requests securely and on time. The chaos created by bespoke and manual processes also makes it difficult for companies to document and prove compliance with applicable laws, including data protection and privacy regulations.

This chaos is then perpetuated and compounded when every law enforcement officer from every agency has to learn each bespoke process; resulting in companies receiving invalid, broad, and poorly tailored requests. Kodex provides companies with an enterprise-grade solution to efficiently manage, and respond to, all the requests they receive, and puts the guardrails in place for law enforcement to do their job properly.

Additionally, Kodex enables companies to customize their intake process, providing law enforcement guidelines in advance about the kind of data they do and don’t have (even apps owned by the same company vary in what data they collect and how it’s stored internally), the necessary legal process (e.g. warrant, subpoena, etc), and any company-specific information (e.g. user ID) required for a valid, legal request. This ensures the legal request is narrowly tailored for the proper information, rather than having to deal with overly broad requests.

“Law enforcement data requests are currently managed through a patchwork of inefficient and often unsecure programs and processes, creating a drag on both public and private sector resources,” said Katherine Boyle, General Partner at a16z. “As former law enforcement officers, engineering, and security experts, the Kodex team is very familiar with the intricacies of this problem and how best to solve it.”

“We are used to seeing clunky and outdated software on the government side, but when it comes to law enforcement response, the private sector has historically been in the same boat,” said Jordan Nof, Co-Founder and Managing Partner of Tusk Venture Partners. “Matt and the Kodex team have lived both sides of this problem and solved it with the platform they built.”

Protection Against Fake Requests

Criminals know that law enforcement agencies often have weaker security than the companies they want to exploit, so they target agency emails hoping to gain access to sensitive and personal data by impersonating law enforcement. While most companies lack the ability to protect against this threat because they rely solely on email verification for government requests, Kodex assumes you can’t trust the person operating the email inbox, even if the domain is legitimate. Instead, the company proactively runs a multi-step verification process for law enforcement accounts combining signals intelligence with technical controls commonly used by fraud detection, account security, and threat intelligence teams.

Since launching in 2021, Kodex has identified and blocked requests from thousands of law enforcement imposters, while alerting agencies that their email domain has been compromised. When this happens, all Kodex accounts registered with that agency are suspended and must be reverified individually.

Trusted Beyond Law Enforcement Requests

Kodex is already used by LER and Trust and Safety teams across a wide range of industries including financial services and technologies, gaming, social media, dating apps, and web3. Whether a company needs to field inbound reports of platform abuse or legal requests from law enforcement, Kodex allows companies to easily and securely connect with verified third parties to safeguard their communities in digital and physical space.

Seed Investors

• a16z
• Tusk Venture Partners
• Govtech Fund
• Y Combinator
• Pioneer Fund
• Sound Ventures
• Thiel Capital
• A-Star Capital

About Kodex

Kodex is the complete solution for law enforcement response. Every day, companies receive numerous subpoenas and summons for sensitive information, often adding up to tens of thousands of incoming requests each year. Each request must be processed and responded to in accordance with applicable laws and regulations. Kodex has solved this daunting challenge with a safe and robust portal built by a team of public safety, engineering, and privacy experts. Our solution is purpose-built to boost efficiency, trust, and peace of mind. Learn more at kodexglobal.com.

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