The most expensive part of cybersecurity is often not the software. It is the person who knows what to do when the software starts yelling at 2:13 in the morning. ForceNow, a compact Colorado Springs company founded in 2020, has built its business around that awkward hour. It installs monitoring, watches the alerts, brings in human judgment and helps contain the mess. For a small company with an IT generalist but no security operations center, that is the difference between owning a smoke detector and having somebody answer the alarm.
The founders know both ends of that equation. Jonathan Steenland was Fujitsu's first chief information security officer, responsible for strategy across a global organization described as 500 companies, 170,000 employees and 100 countries. Hank Bond, a retired U.S. Navy rear admiral, spent nearly 32 years on active duty, including operating and defending Navy and joint technology networks. Their résumés are enterprise-sized. Their opening customer was deliberately smaller.
A pandemic company with a narrow first job
ForceNow started at the beginning of the pandemic. Steenland later said he and Bond saw the jump in attacks and wanted to bring military-grade technology plus human intelligence to small businesses. That is the moment that changed the proposition: sophisticated defense did not have to remain the private utility of a giant employer. A local manufacturer, medical practice or professional firm could buy the operation as a service.
What failed first was the old assumption that prevention alone was enough. Antivirus can scan a device, but it does not necessarily recognize a new behavior, investigate lateral movement, explain a finding to an owner or coordinate recovery. ForceNow's own analogy is unusually good: antivirus is a smoke detector; its managed operation is the fire department. The company did not invent managed detection and response, or MDR. Its distinction is packaging that model for organizations routinely priced out of an internal team.
“If we protect those businesses, we protect our communities.”Jonathan Steenland, co-founder
The core service is TSSRACT, ForceNow's managed detection and response system. An agent is deployed to covered Windows or Mac endpoints. Depending on the tier, ForceNow also watches Microsoft 365, email and dark-web signals. Automated detection is paired with human-in-the-loop intervention when threat thresholds are crossed. The team can investigate remotely, adjust settings, collect relevant data and help contain an incident.
What it costs - and what the price reveals
ForceNow publishes three MDR tiers with annual subscriptions. Essential is listed at $19.99 per device per month, Advanced at $29.99 and Complete at $39.99. The lowest tier covers the endpoint agent, continuous monitoring and alerts, basic incident detection and business-hours support. Advanced adds Microsoft 365 monitoring and email security. Complete adds dark-web monitoring, phishing simulations and employee awareness work.
The numbers are more than a price sheet. They reduce the fear that “enterprise-grade” is code for “book six calls and prepare the budget committee.” A founder can multiply seats by a visible number before speaking to anyone. The trade-off is scope. ForceNow's service agreement says standard MDR does not include every broad industrial incident-response job, events outside its sensor coverage or devices outside the subscription. Low-friction protection is useful only when the boundary is understood.
ForceNow's public funding history looks equally restrained. A Colorado Springs Gazette report recorded a $265,000 angel investment in September 2021. One commercial database describes a $270,000 debt round, but the local report is more specific and contemporary. No valuation or reliable revenue figure is public. This looks like a services-led company growing from earned expertise, not a venture machine trying to purchase a category.
The adjacency play: defend, then help build
The current ForceNow is broader than the pandemic-era pitch. Cybersecurity remains one pillar, surrounded by strategic risk assessments, penetration testing, compliance work and virtual CISO access. The second pillar is AI transformation. Here the company conducts workshops, identifies three practical use cases, models expected returns, designs architecture with the client's team and deploys documented systems using tools the client can control. The advertised goal is a useful implementation in 30 to 60 days, with security and compliance addressed before sensitive data starts wandering.
This is less a pivot than a walk upstream. An MDR provider sees what happens after unsafe systems are deployed. An AI engineering practice can influence what gets deployed in the first place. ForceNow emphasizes encryption, threat modeling, data-flow mapping, zero-trust access and frameworks relevant to SOC 2, HIPAA and PCI-DSS. The target customer is not the hobbyist prompting a chatbot. It is a regulated team in finance, healthcare or legal services that wants automation without surrendering architecture, documentation or control to an opaque vendor.
The third pillar, Web3 auditing, follows the same human-plus-machine formula. A free tier combines an AI scan, light manual review and a consultation. Starter audits begin at $500; professional work at $2,000; enterprise engagements at $5,000-plus. Larger scopes add fuzz testing, symbolic execution, remediation reviews, compliance guidance and continuous change detection. ForceNow says every report receives human approval. That caveat matters because an automated scanner can find familiar bugs while missing the odd business rule that makes a contract valuable - or vulnerable.
“AI helps us work faster, but humans review everything and sign off on every report.”ForceNow's Web3 audit principle
The customer is buying borrowed judgment
ForceNow names RapidFlight, an unmanned-aircraft company, in a customer testimonial. Its broader language addresses small and growing businesses, mid-market operators and regulated professional teams. The common trait is not industry. It is a shortage of specialist attention. The buyer may already own Microsoft security tools and endpoint protection. What it lacks is continuous interpretation, escalation and a senior person who can translate risk into a decision.
That is also where ForceNow sits in a crowded market. Large managed-security vendors such as Arctic Wolf, Huntress and CrowdStrike offer deeper platforms, larger benches or broader channel reach. A company can hire an MSSP, add a fractional CISO, rely on an MSP or build internally. Web3 developers can choose famous auditors with long queues. ForceNow's position is the accessible general store: direct experts, quick onboarding, visible entry prices and one security philosophy spanning endpoints, AI workflows and smart contracts.
The part another operator can copy
There are five stealable moves here. First, start with a neglected customer, not a novel technology. Second, translate expert labor into three packages a buyer can compare. Third, publish enough pricing to qualify interest before a sales call. Fourth, automate collection and triage while keeping people at the trust-heavy decision point. Fifth, move into adjacent products that reuse the same credibility. ForceNow can discuss secure AI because it already owns the security conversation; it can review smart contracts because vulnerability analysis and human sign-off are familiar muscles.
The company has also made talent development part of its local story. In 2022, ForceNow described work with Colorado Succeeds and rural schools including Peyton and Calhan to build cybersecurity curriculum, internships and apprenticeship routes. Steenland's observation was charmingly empirical: at the beginning of a classroom visit, perhaps one student raised a hand when asked about a cyber career; after hearing what the work involved, more than 10 might. The initiative is both civic and practical. Cybersecurity firms complain about the talent gap; ForceNow is testing whether a small employer can widen the funnel by showing students the job, connecting coursework to industry certifications and giving schools a route to paid experience. For an eight-person firm in a talent-starved field, teaching the market may eventually help staff it.
ForceNow is still small, and that should discipline the conclusion. There is no public evidence of massive scale, spectacular revenue or a category victory. There is evidence of a coherent operator's idea: small organizations need access to experienced judgment, not simply access to more software. The company first applied that idea to the midnight security alert. It now applies it to the AI workflow and the smart contract. Three markets, one useful question: when the machine produces an answer, who is qualified to check it?