Each month, we’ll highlight one of the founders of Okta Ventures’ portfolio companies. You’ll get to know more about them and learn how they work with Okta. This month, we’re speaking with Irina Denisenko of Knox.
What is Knox and what is your mission?
The Knox mission is simple: unlock and accelerate access to cutting-edge technology for the U.S. Government, and unlock and accelerate federal revenue for secure, modern technology providers.
Today, there’s a fundamental gap between commercial innovation and the public sector. The federal government needs modern software now more than ever – AI, cloud, and data platforms – but the path to getting approved is slow, expensive, and unpredictable.
FedRAMP is one of the most rigorous security frameworks in the world. It’s also one of the biggest barriers to adoption. It can take years and millions of dollars to achieve.
So most companies don’t even try. And agencies are left using outdated tools.
Knox changes that.
We provide FedRAMP authorization in 90 days, for 90% less, with 16 ATOs – a secure, end-to-end path for SaaS and AI companies to become compliant and serve the federal government in months instead of years.
What were you doing prior to Knox that led you to this moment?
I’ve spent my career building and scaling companies in highly regulated environments.
Before Knox, I was COO of Class Technologies, where we scaled the business to $50M ARR, grew the team to 200 people, and raised over $350M.
During that time, we had to go through FedRAMP ourselves.
It was slow, expensive, and incredibly opaque. Even established, well-resourced companies struggle to navigate it.
We ended up acquiring a FedRAMP-authorized company to accelerate the process, and my experience made the problem at hand very clear: FedRAMP compliance isn’t just a requirement, it’s a major bottleneck.
I built Knox to remove that bottleneck and unlock top technology for the government.
What is Knox’s solution? What challenge does it solve?
The problem is access, not demand.
The government wants modern software, but while there are thousands of commercial SaaS products available, only 502 are FedRAMP authorized.
That bottleneck creates a massive, unnecessary, and harmful gap in innovation between commercial and federal sectors.
Knox provides a managed federal cloud and compliance platform that allows companies to achieve authorization at a fraction of the traditional time and cost.
We handle the infrastructure, security controls, and continuous compliance with KnoxAI – so that our customers can stay focused on building and delivering best-in-class products, rather than navigating bureaucracy.
For federal agencies, Knox means faster access to the tools they want and need.
For commercial businesses, Knox means a clear path into the federal market.
Why did Knox want to work with Okta?
Okta is the top identity management solution, full stop. And identity is at the core of compliance.
Every system in the federal environment needs to answer the same questions:
- Who has access?
- What are they allowed to do?
- How is that access controlled and audited?
Okta has built the standard for identity in the enterprise.
As we bring modern SaaS and AI into highly regulated environments, identity becomes even more critical – not only for users, but for systems, services, and automation that impact national security.
Working with Okta allows us to build on top of a trusted identity layer that enterprises and government agencies already rely on. That alignment is important to Knox.
How is Knox working with Okta? What support do you look for in a corporate partner?
Knox uses Okta in every single customer deployment.
It’s fundamental to how we secure our government cloud environments – ensuring identity, access control, and auditability are built in from day one.
In a regulated environment, identity isn’t a feature. It’s mission-critical.
Our partnership with Okta allows us to build on infrastructure that enterprises and government agencies already trust as we bring modern SaaS and AI into environments with the highest standards of cybersecurity and compliance.
More broadly, we look for three things in a corporate partner:
- Deep domain expertise
- Alignment on where the market is heading
- Willingness to work through complex, unsolved problems
Okta brings all three in spades.
What trends do you expect to see in the FedRAMP industry?
The biggest shift we anticipate is the “Landing Zone” concept.
The government is prioritizing the adoption of modern technologies – especially AI – more than ever before.
At the same time, existing compliance and approval frameworks aren’t designed to meet the needed pace.
Specifically, traditional FedRAMP processes require each commercial business to find its own federal sponsor, and if a sponsor is lost, so is authorization and Authority to Operate (ATO).
With the new Landing Zone framework, companies can “land” their apps within a secure environment like Knox, and thus inherit existing ATOs – In Knox’s case, 16 of them.
This enables the highest security and compliance standards while also creating more stability and longevity.
Security, compliance, and infrastructure are no longer separate layers but a single operating system.
The companies that win will be the ones that make secure adoption seamless.
Interested in joining Okta Ventures? Check out our FAQ here and feel free to reach out to our team or submit your business for review.
