CSS Founder Becomes 7th Person to Visit Challenger Deep and Surpass Kármán line

October 13, 2025 - Aaron Newman, founder and CEO at Cloud Storage Security (CSS), has become the seventh person in history to visit both the maximum known depth on Planet Earth and the barrier to outer space. 

Founded in 2020, CSS provides Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) for cloud storage. Newman brings over 30 years of security and cloud experience to DataDefender, a platform designed to solve the security gap for data at rest. This activity monitoring solution focuses on providing users a complete picture of where their data resides, if it is stored securely, who is accessing it, and most importantly if this access is malicious and could lead to exfiltration. Newman is also the Director of Casmer Labs, CSS’ internal threat laboratory. The Casmer Labs team works around the clock to identify and ensure DataDefender protects against both new and impending threats to the storage layer in the cloud.

Like all of Newman’s previous startups, Cloud Storage Security was founded to solve a practical problem; in this case, that cloud security overwhelmingly focuses on data in use by compute and applications, leaving the “keys to the kingdom” - data at rest - exposed. 

DataDefender can be fully set up within 15 minutes and is available now at signup.datadefender.io.

The Voyage

The Mariana Trench is an oceanic trench roughly 125 miles east of the Mariana Islands in the western Pacific Ocean. On July 3, 2022, Newman descended to the Challenger Deep, the deepest known point within the trench (and rest of the world), sitting ~36,000 feet below sea level. On October 8, 2025, as a part of Blue Origin’s NS-36 expedition, surpassed the Kármán line, the internationally accepted definition of the “edge of space”.

Figure 1. Picture of Planet Earth taken by Newman from New Shepard's crew capsule.

The voyage, which reached a maximum velocity of ~2,200MPH (~Mach 3.47) and a maximum height of ~350,000ft (66.4mi), housed 6 total crew members. Blue Origin, founded by Jeff Bezos, carried out its first crewed mission in 2021. The company has built two reusable rockets; the sub-orbital New Shepard and the orbital New Glenn.

Speaking of the voyage, “The one word I said over and over and over again was wow,” Newman recalled. “As you’re accelerating up directly at 1,000, 2,000 miles per hour it’s kind of mind blowing for something like that to happen and then the acceleration even comes down, hitting 5gs on your descent.” A full replay of the launch can be found on Blue Origin’s YouTube channel.

Each crew member was allowed to take a small bag of belongings with them to space. Among the items Newman brought was a stack of Cloud Storage Security stickers, which will be given away. Supplies are limited, but if you would like a sticker, please email marketing@cloudstoragesec.com or reach out to Cloud Storage Security on LinkedIn. Stickers will also be given out in person at ISC2 in Nashville, TN (Oct 28-30) and AWS re:Invent in Las Vegas, NV (Dec 1-5).

Figure 2. Cloud Storage Security stickers, NS-36 flight emblem, and Blue Origin keychain.

About Aaron Newman

Aaron is a serial entrepreneur and explorer. He founded five successful software startups, authored multiple books, and holds six patents. As an explorer, he has traveled to the stern of the Titanic, descended into the Mariana Trench, and twice attempted to summit Mt. Everest. He founded Exploring Our Deep World, a non-profit organization advancing education, conservation, scientific research, and exploration of Earth’s deep waters. A proud U.S. Army veteran of the First Gulf War, Aaron serves on the boards of TAPS (Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors) and the Strong National Museum of Play. He is also the father of two children, Thomas and Evelyn. Find Aaron on LinkedIn.