Enterprises have a data problem. In the simplest terms, they have an ever-growing amount of it in a seemingly ever-growing number of places.
That is particularly true when it comes to a company’s important security data. That is something that Atlanta-based entrepreneur Matt Eberhart saw first hand throughout his career. The reality is that on average, a company needs to do twenty manual pivots into different tools to conduct one security investigation.
“The amount of data that [enterprises] have in their environment — that their business creates and that their users create — is growing like crazy,” Eberhart explained to Hypepotamus. Users and employees alike are creating more documents, files, and digital content every day. And company information is often living across multiple distributed cloud, SaaS, and AI systems. That means that data lives in different formats, making it difficult for security professionals to understand where to search for all that data and how to read it all.

“If you’re a security team and you’re trying to defend and protect the company…the systems you need to access to get that data are also expanding,” he added.
That’s where Eberhart and his team come in. They are building Query, an Atlanta-based startup helping enterprises get better answers from their security data, regardless of where it lives.
Inside Query’s Technology & Team
Eberhart uses an analogy when describing Query, likening its Federated Search platform to a Google Translate for security-relevant data. Integrating with different APIs, the platform is able to go out and ‘translate’ security data from a variety of different sources and bring it back in a format that is actually digestible.
“The real value that we deliver comes from the ability to normalize [data] into one picture,” he added. “So now you can actually see and use data from all these different distributed, non-connected sources in one unified way.”
Matt Eberhart built up his career at AGL Resources (acquired by Southern Company) and was an early employee at SecureWorks, the Atlanta-based cybersecurity startup that was acquired by Dell in 2011.
Since leaving SecureWorks in 2018, Eberhart has built up several companies in various stages, ranging from pre-revenue to established, in the security space before meeting the founders at Query and joining as CEO in 2022. He said he was drawn to working at early-stage companies because of his love of solving problems and building teams.
In the early stages, the team has found success growing by bringing on people who have previously worked together. While the team is remote-first and has grown to be around 20 people, they’ve set up a central hub at Atlanta Tech Village’s Buckhead location.
Winning Corporates
Query went through Engage last year, an Atlanta-based program designed for B2B and enterprise-focused startups. Underpinning the program is a multi-corporate venture capital fund which brings together some of the largest enterprise businesses in the Metro Atlanta area
Following the program, Eberhart and the Query team have been busy working on closing more deals with corporate customers. One of its most recent wins was an investment from Cisco Investments, the funding arm of the digital communications technology giant.
Part of the investment will go towards driving the adoption of the Query Splunk app, which can help companies with their Security Data Operations (SecDataOps).
“Effective security operations require teams to answer questions quickly using data from many sources, without long onboarding times and increasing data costs. Query is purpose-built to do just that. We are delighted to invest in Query,” said Janey Hoe, Vice President of Cisco Investments.
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Photos provided by Query