A new cybersecurity player, Dutch-based Dawnguard, has stepped into the spotlight with a bold ambition to redesign how security is integrated into digital systems, starting from the very first line of code. Backed by $3 million in pre-seed funding led by 9900 Capital, along with a group of angel investors that includes experienced CIOs, CISOs, and scale-up founders. These early backers see Dawnguard’s approach as a timely answer to the growing complexity of securing AI-era systems, where existing tools often fall short.
The funding will support the expansion of Dawnguard’s engineering team, strengthen enterprise integrations, and help bring its platform into broader production use across industries with mission-critical infrastructure.
As stated by Mahdi Abdulrazak, CEO & Co-Founder, Dawnguard to TFN, “Eleven employees at this time, we expect to scale the team with 4-5 new employees in the coming period.”
A new chapter in security architecture
Dawnguard’s core belief is that security should not be an afterthought. For too long, cybersecurity has been treated reactively, bolted on at the end of development cycles or triggered by breaches. Dawnguard flips this model by embedding security directly into the system architecture, ensuring that the foundations of digital products are secure, compliant, and scalable from day one.
This approach marks the creation of a new cybersecurity category, one that emphasises collaboration between engineering and security teams rather than the traditional siloed methods. By creating a shared canvas, Dawnguard helps teams co-design infrastructure that balances not only security but also cost-efficiency, resilience, and sustainability.
What kind of challenges is the company tackling?
Fragmented Security Architecture: Traditional security design relies heavily on manual reviews, scattered documentation, and inconsistent enforcement of security policies. This leads to misalignment between what’s intended and what’s actually deployed.
Lack of Enforcement of Design Intent: Even when security policies are well-defined, they often fail to translate into actual, well-implemented, and secure infrastructure. This is due to the gap between the validated design and its manual deployment. Dawnguard closes this gap by automatically generating the code that is fully consistent with the validated design.
Poor balance between security and other non-functional requirements: One of the big caveats of security is that it’s often implemented in isolation. But security should enable business, not block it. That’s why Dawnguard examines security within its larger context. Meaning, Dawnguard optimises your security while taking into account the impact on cost, sustainability, and overall resilience.
Time-consuming non-functional validation process: Dawnguard brings all the stakeholders together on a collaborative canvas to design, validate, and deploy secure infrastructure in a matter of minutes. Instead of requiring a weeks or months-long manual validation process.
Powered by experience and intelligent systems
Founded by Mahdi Abdulrazak and Kim van Lavieren, Dawnguard’s leadership team includes veterans from IBM, Microsoft, Amazon, and military cyber operations. Their deep expertise in AI, cloud infrastructure, and large-scale security programs gives them a unique edge in tackling today’s fast-evolving digital threats.
Mahdi’s unconventional entrepreneurial journey began as a refugee in war zones, working 23 jobs before age 12. Mahdi speaks 10 languages. Powered by curiosity, he’s worn many hats: refugee, hacker, founder, CISO, serial investor, and now Co-Founder and CEO of his latest venture, Dawnguard.
Dawnguard’s technology integrates AI and machine learning engines across the entire IT lifecycle which it calls the span from “day zero to day 10,000.” The goal is not only to catch issues early but to evolve continuously alongside dynamic enterprise environments. These engines aren’t limited to scanning code or automating security reviews. Instead, they help visualise, validate, and automate secure architectures from the start.
How was the idea born?
Mahdi Abdulrazak said: “For years, security architecture has been stuck in the past—bogged down by manual reviews, scattered documentation, and processes that rarely reflect the actual intent behind a system’s design. It was a broken model: reactive, inconsistent, and dangerously disconnected from the pace of modern development. That’s where Dawnguard began.”
He added, “Founded by a team with decades of experience leading large-scale security teams and recognised as subject matter experts in cloud and enterprise security, we knew the industry needed a shift. We were tired of seeing security treated as a checkbox—an afterthought rather than a foundation. So we built Dawnguard to flip the model on its head. Instead of relying on ineffective processes, our platform validates architecture from the start, generates production-ready infrastructure as code, and continuously aligns your security posture long after deployment.”
Built for cloud-native teams
The platform is specifically designed for security architects, DevOps engineers, and cloud teams navigating the complexity of modern infrastructure. Dawnguard automates several critical steps in the process:
- Validating infrastructure designs before deployment
- Generating production-ready Infrastructure as Code (IaC) from secure architecture
- Enforcing security posture continuously post-deployment, eliminating drift over time
This kind of end-to-end automation allows teams to move quickly without compromising on security. It also ensures that security decisions are aligned with the infrastructure’s intended behaviour, reducing risk and misconfigurations.
Competitive landscape
There is currently no company that does what we do. However, the closest competitors are clover.security and prime security. We approach the problem from an architectural view, all the way from the extreme left.
Looking ahead: Security for the AI era
With the rise of generative AI and increasingly dynamic application environments, the line between code and infrastructure has started to blur. Dawnguard sees a widening gap and a growing risk, where “vibe coding” powered by GenAI meets real-world cloud infrastructure. The company aims to close that gap, offering a scalable security model that aligns with how software is built and deployed today.
Dawnguard’s mission is nothing short of reimagining cybersecurity from the ground up. By integrating intelligent systems and architecture-level thinking, the company hopes to make shift-left security not just a buzzword, but a practical, reliable standard, spanning the full lifecycle of today’s digital systems.
“Our industry treats security as a checkbox. It’s broken,” said Mahdi Abdulrazak, CEO of Dawnguard. “We built Dawnguard because security needs to be part of the system’s DNA from the start, not an afterthought. This is about aligning intent with reality, and giving teams the tools to enforce that alignment at the earliest stage and long after deployment.”
“Dawnguard closes the gap between design and reality,” said Kim van Lavieren. “We’re giving teams the power to translate security intent into enforceable code so they don’t have to rely on spreadsheets, static docs, or guesswork.”
“Dawnguard isn’t just building tech — they’re rewriting the DNA of cybersecurity. In a world addicted to patching symptoms, they’ve chosen to re-engineer the root. That’s not just bold — it’s necessary,” said Dimitri van Zantvliet, Dutch Railways CISO & Chair Dutch CISO Community, and a Dawnguard investor and advisor.
“Hundreds of security tools overwhelm CISOs with promises of better detection, yet few tackle the root issue: design flaws in code that AI-driven threats exploit. As attacks grow smarter, defenses must shift left—embedding resilience at the codebase. We are excited to back Dawnguard, who build protection by design, not patch by necessity,” said Chris Corbishley, Managing Partner 9900 Capital.
