Unlock data where it lies.

Make it useful for AI.

Hardshell makes your most valuable data safe to use in your AI platforms.

How it Works

Where does your enterprise AI leak data?

Models memorize sensitive content from training data, and AI knowledge bases surface documents users were never cleared to see. Pick an attack scenario to watch each pathway leak, and see what changes when Hardshell sits between your data and the model.

Platform

The secure foundation between your data and your AI

Your data stays in your environment. AI knowledge bases, model training, and fine-tuning run on top of a secure data foundation, and every workflow inherits the same measurement, monitoring, and hardening.

Tested with real attacks

Live-Fire Exposure Testing

Hardshell's platform gives you vulnerability scores backed by demonstrated attacks and the evidence behind each one. Point it at any system that puts your data behind a model: a chatbot, a support agent, internal search.

Watch every retrieval

Knowledge Base Telemetry and Detection

Add one package to your retrieval path and Hardshell sees how your AI knowledge base is actually being used. Which chunks each query returned, for whom, and whether the pattern looks like extraction. Classic RAG, agentic retrieval, GraphRAG and connector-based assistants all instrument the same way. Detection runs across requests, so distributed exfiltration surfaces too. Telemetry is keyed to opaque IDs, so document content and PII never leave your environment.

Dataset Hardening

When testing finds exposure, Hardshell hardens the data itself before any model touches it. Build-time transformations reduce what an attacker can extract, and runtime defenses prevent access when anomalous behavior is flagged.

Utility Verification

Hardening only counts if the system still works. Hardshell continuously evaluates answer quality against your own benchmarks and flags regressions as your corpus grows, so security never quietly costs you performance.

Multiple layers of a data security system for AI

Model-agnostic, store-agnostic

Works Where Your Data Lives

Native integration for major AI platforms plus a standard interface for self-hosted and open-weight models. Built on OpenTelemetry, so the same telemetry stream mirrors into the observability stack you already run. Beyond retrieval, the same foundation secures tabular model training with attack-tested hardening.

About Us

Securing the Foundation of AI

Hardshell's mission is to advance data security and utility where trust matters most for AI and beyond.

Our Team

Founder

Hunter Moore, PhD

CTO

Hunter Moore, PhD

CTO & Founder

Hunter holds a Ph.D. in Systems Engineering from the University of Virginia and spent over five years advising the Department of Defense on AI security at the Joint AI Center and the CDAO. He taught a graduate AI security course at UVA and is a Senior Member of IEEE.

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CO-Founder

Andrew Schoka

CEO

Andrew Schoka

CEO & Co-Founder

Andrew is a former U.S. Army Cyber Warfare Officer with assignments across U.S. Cyber Command, the Cyber National Mission Force, ARCYBER, and USSOCOM. He holds an MBA from UVA Darden, an M.S. in Cybersecurity from Georgia Tech, and an M.E. in Systems Engineering from UVA.

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Ben Cutter

Founding Staff Software Engineer

Ben Cutter

Founding Staff Software Engineer

Ben spent nearly twelve years at Indeed, one of the world's largest hiring platforms, across operations, quality engineering, and software development. He holds an M.E. from UVA and joined Hardshell at founding in November 2025.

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Sami Saliba

Founding AI Security Engineer

Sami Saliba

Founding AI Security Engineer

Sami leads Hardshell's data-layer and adversarial-ML work. He was an AI researcher at Virginia Tech's Hume Center for National Security and Technology and is a published researcher on trusted AI in high-risk environments.

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Andrew Stephens

Founding AI Security Scientist

Andrew Stephens

Founding AI Security Scientist

Andrew builds the statistics and data science behind Hardshell's detection methods. He previously worked at Generac and Rotunda Solutions, and holds a master's in Applied Statistics and Data Science from Cornell.

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Reed Cutter

Senior Software Engineer

Reed Cutter

Senior Software Engineer

Reed focuses on platform reliability and test automation after nearly nine years at Indeed across software development and quality automation roles. He holds a bachelor's from RIT and joined Hardshell in February 2026.

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