How 360Learning Secured Production Access and Developer Experience with Hoop.dev
About 360Learning
Founded in 2013, 360Learning is the AI-powered learning platform that combines LMS and LXP capabilities. They help organizations design and deliver training programs that move as quickly as their teams do with collaborative learning. Behind the product is a mature cloud-native platform built on distributed services, multi-environment deployments, and a rapidly evolving Kubernetes ecosystem. As the company expanded, both engineering and security teams faced a familiar challenge: how to maintain strong, auditable controls over production access while preserving the speed and autonomy that drive product innovation.
The environment spanned databases, internal services, and a broad set of Kubernetes clusters that all required secure, gated access. With rising complexity and a clear mandate to uphold ISO 27001 standards, 360Learning recognized the need for a more modern access model that strengthens security posture while enabling developer-friendly access workflows to eliminate friction rather than create it.
The 360Learning Challenge
Security That Accelerates Delivery: Unified Access with a Developer Experience Built for Adoption
| Company | 360Learning |
|---|---|
| Founded | 2013 |
| Industry | AI-powered Learning Platform (LMS + LXP) |
| Platform Architecture | Cloud-native, distributed services, multi-environment Kubernetes |
| Primary Teams Involved | Security, Platform, DevOps, Developer Experience |
| Compliance Drivers | ISO 27001, SOC 2 |
| Core Challenge | Enforcing auditable production access without slowing developers |
| Legacy State | Retired jump host, fragmented access tooling, unreliable scripts |
| Outcome | Stronger security posture with bottom-up developer adoption |
Regulatory Assurance
360Learning’s security team, led by its Chief Information Security Officer, launched an initiative to reinforce production access across databases, internal services, and emerging Kubernetes environments with an eye to their audit requirements under ISO 27001 and SOC 2. After experimenting with a few solutions, it became obvious that existing tools could not provide the visibility or control that 360Learning required. They offered limited auditability and made it difficult to enforce least privilege without introducing delays that slowed engineers down.
As their CISO explained, when a security tool adds friction, people find ways around it, and the control no longer serves its purpose. The task was clear. The company needed stronger security and audit controls delivered through workflows that developers would willingly adopt.
Developer Velocity Without Risk
Engineering teams were deep into a Kubernetes migration and needed safe, consistent access to clusters and databases. A legacy jump host had been retired, leaving developers without a reliable way to reach the resources they depended on. DevOps and Developer Experience focused on building an access workflow that was:
- Secure by default
- Intuitive and familiar to use
- Consistent across environments
As soon as the first documentation went live, developers outside the pilot group discovered it, onboarded themselves, and began using the new access model. By the time the formal rollout occurred, most engineers were already using hoop.dev daily. To the security team, this organic growth confirmed that the right security solution spreads on its own.
Eliminating Operational Toil
Maintenance scripts and automation workflows had become unreliable and difficult to manage. DevOps and DX identified several compounding issues:
- Brittle scripts and automation that were hard to maintain
- No coherent, auditable foundation for automation
- Existing access tooling that was expensive, underused, and misaligned with daily workflows
- Fragmented tools creating unnecessary operational overhead
The teams aligned on the need for a single, flexible platform to govern access, streamline automation, and replace the patchwork of tools slowing them down.
The Hoop.dev Solution
Protect Sensitive Data. Automate Access. Block Dangerous Actions.
Hoop.dev gave 360Learning a unified, developer-friendly access layer for databases, services, and automation. Access policies are defined once and enforced consistently across environments, eliminating manual provisioning while preserving existing identity workflows.
Platform and DX teams manage access through configuration-as-code, while engineers use familiar tools to connect securely and get work done.
Key capabilities that mattered:
- Seamless integration with 360Learning’s MongoDB architecture, with no structural changes required
- Centralized, auditable access governance across environments
- Runbooks that replaced brittle scripts and enabled secure automation for operational tasks
- A single interface for interactive access and automation as the platform continues to evolve
- A frictionless experience that drove organic, bottom-up adoption across engineering
As one engineer put it: “As long as a user can connect, Hoop can connect.”
Quantified and Qualitative Results
Before vs After Hoop.dev
| Before Hoop.dev | After Hoop.dev |
|---|---|
| Fragmented access across tools and scripts | Unified access layer for databases, automation, and services |
| Retired jump host with no clear replacement | Secure, intuitive access workflows adopted organically |
| Manual provisioning and brittle scripts | Configuration-driven access and auditable automation |
| Limited visibility for audits | Centralized, audit-ready access logs |
| Security controls created friction | Security controls embedded in developer workflows |
- Organic internal adoption even before launch. Developers discovered the documentation, onboarded themselves, and shared workflows across teams, demonstrating a natural fit with existing engineering habits.
- Consolidation of all access workflows. Database connections and automation tasks moved into a single consistent system, creating a clearer operational model and preparing the organization to extend this approach to Kubernetes and containerized environments.
- Significant reduction in operational toil. Ad-hoc provisioning and manual configuration work were replaced by a consistent, configuration-driven model that reduced maintenance overhead and allowed engineers to focus on higher-value initiatives.
- Improved audit readiness ahead of SOC 2 preparation. Centralized visibility into access activity strengthened the company’s evidence collection process and elevated its overall audit posture.
- A future-proof path to unified access governance. As 360Learning completes its transition to Kubernetes, Hoop becomes the central control layer for production access, ensuring that security and developer experience advance together as the platform grows.
Why It Matters
360Learning needed a unified access layer that could strengthen security while supporting rapid delivery, and Hoop.dev made that possible by giving the organization a frictionless way to govern every production interaction. Developers gained intuitive, self-service access to the systems they rely on, while the DX and platform teams established centralized, auditable controls that reduced operational overhead and removed the bottlenecks that once slowed the business. As the company prepares for its next stage of growth and approaches SOC 2 Type II, Hoop provides a consistent foundation for secure access across databases, automation workflows, Kubernetes environments, and future services.
The result is a platform that can scale confidently, one where security is simpler, access is intuitive, and governance naturally supports the pace of innovation.