--- title: "About Us" description: "Our mission, team, and founding story. North Pole Security was founded by the original creators of Santa, the open source macOS security agent." doc_version: "1" last_updated: "2026-05-22" canonical: "https://northpole.security/about" --- # Built by the creators of Santa North Pole Security was founded to make proactive endpoint protection usable at scale. We're the team behind Santa, the most trusted macOS security agent. [Book a demo](https://northpole.typeform.com/to/SG9jCi0v) Meet the team Our mission ## Stop threats before they run The security industry has spent decades chasing threats after they've already infiltrated systems. We believe there's a better way. - North Pole Security exists to make proactive endpoint protection, the practice of blocking threats before they can execute, usable for organizations of any size. - We're the team behind Santa, originally pioneered at Google and now maintained by NPS. We bring that same prevention-first discipline to every enterprise that runs macOS. Our story ## A decade of macOS security, from Google to NPS 2014 ### Created Santa at Google Built the binary authorization system protecting 100,000+ macOS devices. 2024 ### Founded North Pole Security Forked Santa from Google to accelerate development. Google officially redirected to the NPS repository. 2025 ### Raised $4M seed from a16z 12 releases, 470+ pull requests merged in the first year. More in one year than Google merged in ten. The team ## Founders who shipped the software you already trust Our team brings deep experience from Google, Meta, Coinbase, and the broader macOS security community. We created Santa, ran the Mac security stack at Google, and shipped the Endpoint Security Framework that every macOS security product depends on. ![Pete Markowsky](https://northpole.security/images/team/pete.png) ### Pete Markowsky CEO Co-founded and scaled Capsule8 (enterprise cloud EDR, sold to Sophos). Led all first-party security agent development at Google, including Santa. ![Russell Hancox](https://northpole.security/images/team/russell.png) ### Russell Hancox CTO One of two original authors of Santa. 13+ year Google veteran and staff engineer. Ran Google's Mac build system and Mac operations. ![Tom Burgin](https://northpole.security/images/team/tom.png) ### Tom Burgin Founding Engineer One of two original authors of Santa. 8+ year Google senior engineer. Built and ran Google's Mac build system. ![Matt White](https://northpole.security/images/team/matt.png) ### Matt White Founding Engineer Original author and lead of Apple's Endpoint Security Framework that all macOS security products must use. Last Santa lead at Google. Our values ## How we build The principles that guide how we build Workshop and partner with our customers. ### Prevention first We believe in stopping threats, not just detecting them. Block by default, approve with confidence. ### Open source commitment Santa will always be open source. We build in the open and welcome community contributions. ### Customer partnership We build alongside Fortune 500 security teams, not just for them. Their reality shapes our roadmap. Backed by ## Andreessen Horowitz led our $4M seed North Pole Security raised a $4M seed round led by a16z to accelerate our go-to-market efforts and enhance Workshop, our flagship endpoint protection platform. - Funding fuels engineering velocity. In our first year we shipped 12 releases and merged 470+ pull requests, more than Google did in ten. ## See Workshop in action Find out how Workshop can protect your organization with prevention-first endpoint security. [Book a demo](https://northpole.typeform.com/to/SG9jCi0v) [Explore Workshop](https://northpole.security/workshop) ## Sitemap - [Home](https://northpole.security/index.md) - [Workshop](https://northpole.security/workshop.md) - [Santa](https://northpole.security/santa.md) - [Features](https://northpole.security/features.md) - [Cookbook](https://northpole.security/cookbook.md) - [Docs](https://northpole.security/docs.md) - [Blog](https://northpole.security/blog.md) - [Glossary](https://northpole.security/glossary.md) - [About](https://northpole.security/about.md) - [Contact](https://northpole.security/contact.md)