By David Levy
At first glance, Kaushal Saraf’s story may seem familiar: a background in systems engineering, experience at high-growth startups, and a passion for clean, maintainable code. But underneath that résumé is a different kind of engineer—one quietly transforming how small businesses in the Defense Industrial Base (DIB) protect themselves from cyber threats. Not with buzzwords or dashboards, but with purpose-built, scalable infrastructure and a mindset of precision problem-solving.
Kaushal Saraf is an engineer at Atomus, a cybersecurity company built to serve organizations that can’t afford to get security wrong—but also can’t afford the security teams, consultants, or complex tooling usually required to stay protected. Atomus focuses on serving small and midsize businesses (SMBs) working across sensitive supply chains—companies responsible for defense manufacturing, government contracts, and mission-critical logistics.
It’s a world where threats are real—nation-state actors, zero-day exploits, and increasingly stringent requirements like NIST 800-171 and CMMC Level 2. But it’s also a world where most organizations are overburdened and under-resourced. That’s where Kaushal’s work makes the difference.
Engineering for the Underserved
Before Atomus, Kaushal helped build secure systems for financial services and worked on telemetry pipelines and threat detection systems used by large enterprises. But what caught his attention was a systemic gap: smaller businesses faced just as many risks as large ones—but with none of the operational infrastructure to defend themselves.
“The tools weren’t just expensive,” Kaushal explains. “They were fragmented, overcomplicated, and designed for companies with dedicated SOC teams. These businesses needed something that understood their environment, their workflows, their compliance pressure.”
That realization fueled Kaushal’s focus: to create a platform that understands security in context. His work at Atomus centers on building systems that not only detect threats, but also help businesses meet federal compliance requirements—automatically, continuously, and intelligently.
From Red Alerts to Real-Time Context
One of Kaushal’s most impactful contributions has been leading the engineering design for the Context-Aware Security Data Warehouse—a backend engine that correlates user behavior, asset posture, access patterns, and configuration drift across endpoints, cloud workloads, and OT devices.
Rather than overwhelming users with generic risk scores or endless log data, the platform observes, learns, and surfaces what actually matters. “We don’t build dashboards that blink red,” Kaushal says. “We build systems that understand.”
The architecture behind this? A distributed, event-driven system built on stateless services, zero-trust access models, and declarative policy enforcement. Everything is designed for scale and clarity, ensuring that the system grows with the business—without adding complexity.
Compliance as Code, not Consulting
A major challenge in the DIB is compliance. Regulations like NIST 800-171 and CMMC Level 2 are complex, evolving, and burdensome—especially for companies without dedicated compliance staff.
Kaushal’s answer wasn’t to offer another checklist. It was to engineer compliance as a platform capability.
Under his technical expertise, Atomus introduced pre-verified infrastructure baselines, automated evidence collection, and composable compliance mapping—tying telemetry directly to controls. This allows businesses to go from “I need to be compliant” to actually enforcing security controls and producing audit-ready artifacts in a matter of days—not months.
“Everything from patching logic to configuration hashing to user access telemetry gets piped through the warehouse. The platform knows what matters, what’s missing, and what’s out of policy—and it tells you what to fix, or fixes it for you.”
Security with Empathy
Perhaps most notably, Kaushal brings a deep sense of empathy to his engineering decisions. He understands that SMBs in the defense space are often juggling contracts, manufacturing, logistics, and compliance—all without full-time security teams.
“Most of our users wear five hats. They’re CEOs, IT admins, operations leads. They don’t need more alerts. They need answers.”
That insight shows up across the platform: in how alerts are grouped, how configuration drift is explained, and how the system chooses which recommendations to surface. Kaushal’s philosophy is simple: security should serve people, not overwhelm them.
A Pragmatic View of AI
While the industry buzzes with AI hype, Kaushal takes a focused, infrastructure-first approach. Atomus uses large language models—but only where they materially reduce operational load. For example, helping a user summarize a security incident for a CMMC assessment, or auto-generating remediation guidance based on real-time telemetry.
“We’re not chasing trends,” Kaushal says. “We’re building systems that save our customers time, reduce their stress, and make them more resilient.”
Looking Ahead
Kaushal doesn’t claim to have all the answers. But he’s clear on the path forward: engineer for clarity, standardize where others complicate, and always build with the operator in mind.
He envisions a future where small defense suppliers no longer have to choose between growth and risk—where cybersecurity becomes a background system that adapts, guides, and protects by design.
For someone helping build the security foundations of America’s digital supply chain, Kaushal remains humble, focused, and quietly relentless. His work doesn’t chase headlines. But for the hundreds of companies now depending on Atomus to meet federal standards and stay safe—it couldn’t be more important.
