While this may appear to be an altruistic consortium of security-minded companies trying to help startups do the right thing, my skeptical take is that it's primarily a way to drum up business, which explains why the contributors list largely consists of vendors that help you check these items off your list.

Google (one of the main sponsors) and other cloud-hosting vendors can essentially say, "Sure, you can cobble all of this together yourself -- or you can buy our services with much of this already baked in."