Tushar was the CEO of Attivo Networks for a decade before selling to SentinelOne for $600 million dollars in 2022. Attivo Networks built deception technology which would trick attackers into attacking fake infrastructure. A common form of deception is a honeypot, which is an intentionally vulnerable server so defenders can gather information about attackers such as their IP address or attack techniques. Attivo provided comprehensive deception solutions and served five of the Fortune 10. In the episode we talk about Tushar's learnings from a decade at Cisco, the unique origin story of Attivo and its founders, and the sale process to SentinelOne.

Pete is CEO and co-founder of Realm Security, which is building a security data fabric to help companies manage their disparate log sources for monitoring tools. For companies spending millions of dollars every year on contracts with Splunk, Realm is the light at the end of the tunnel that can help them move to a cheaper SIEM tool. Pete started his career at Rapid7 after dropping out of college, and he worked his way through a variety of cybersecurity sales leadership roles since, including companies acquired by CarbonBlack and Cisco. In the episode we talk about his emphasis on moving roles for new learning opportunities, his obsession with customer problems rather than potential solutions, and how Realm's message is unique in a cyber ecosystem where vendors are always asking for CISOs to grow their budget. Website Sponsor: VulnCheck

In the spirit of the end of the year, I decided to put together some highlights from a handful of episodes over the course of 2024. This episode will feature a select few snippets from five different episodes over the course of the year including Chris from RADICL and LogRhythm, Gil from Orca, Chris from Veracode, Andy from BreachRx, and Kabir from Leen. There will be a mix of stories of unique crossroads, general entrepreneurial advice, and cybersecurity-specific challenges. Thank you to all the listeners this year! Sponsor: Vulncheck

Odysseas is co-founder and CEO of Phylax, a web3 security company building a security layer for blockchain-based protocols. Before Phylax, Odysseas worked at Nomad, a crypto exchange which suffered a $190M breach in August 2022. In the episode, we talk about his unique background as a developer relations manager, the approach law enforcement takes to recover funds in the wake of a crypto breach, the different attack surfaces for the web3 ecosystem, and more. If you are not a blockchain expert, do not worry, me neither. There are still plenty of interesting high level conversation points throughout!

Maksym is CEO and founder of Mantis Analytics, providing holistic security awareness to organizations through a social media monitoring platform. The tool combs media channels to identify risks to a customer's business and escalates alerts accordingly. I thought this would be an interesting opportunity to look at the broader security world to understand some parallels with pure cybersecurity. Maksym worked in business intelligence and product management for two decades before the Ukraine war inspired him to start something that would make a difference. In the episode we talk about the war events leading to the creation of Mantis, the pivot from a focus on solely disinformation, the problems with keyword searches with the growth of generative AI, and more.  Website Sponsor: VulnCheck

Ben is founder and CEO of watchTowr, building an external attack surface management tool (EASM) that performs automated penetration testing and red teaming activities. Before founding watchTowr in 2021, Ben worked as a security consultant for a decade focused largely on penetration testing. And as Ben describes in the episode, what started as a combination of cobbled together scripts from his previous experience has since grown into a comprehensive automation platform. Website: https://watchtowr.com/ Sponsor: VulnCheck

Uri is co-founder and CEO of Refine Intelligence, which is focused on anti money laundering and check fraud. Uri previously came on the podcast in 2022 and talked about the evolution of fraud prevention over the last 20 years. I re-released that episode back in August because I loved the story so much. At that time, we talked mostly about his previous company, BioCatch, which sold a majority stake to Permira earlier this year at a 1.3 billion dollar valuation. In this episode, we pick up the story with the evolution of fraud over the last few years, including why money laundering and check fraud still present such massive risk areas to banks. Website: refineintelligence.com Sponsor: VulnCheck

David is CEO and Founder of Naoris Protocol, which provides a blockchain-based mesh architecture for improved endpoint integrity. The company was founded in 2016 and has since raised over $30 million. Before Naoris, David was a cyber leader at a range of global companies including AT&T, Electronic Arts, London City Airport, and others. In the episode, we discuss his background discovering cybersecurity in a small farming village in Portugal and the real-world applications of blockchain technology which have yet to become popularized.

Oded is co-founder and CEO of Akeyless, which provides a vaultless secrets management platform for companies to manage their non-human identities. We will talk more about the vault vs. vaultless approach in the episode, but essentially the Akeyless design allows for a SaaS model which dramatically reduces time to value compared to often cumbersome vault implementation. Akeyless last raised a whopping $65 million dollar Series B in late 2022. Before Akeyless, Oded navigated a winding career parth from a Captain in the IDF working on identity management, to professional services, to product management at a B2C transportation technology company, and then finally back to identity management and Akeyless in 2018. Akeyless Website Thanks to our sponsor, VulnCheck!

Oz is co-founder and CEO of Opsin, which provides access control capabilities to LLM outputs ensuring users only get appropriate outputs based on their access level. The company was founded earlier this year, but they have already seen strong customer and investor interest given they are aimed at a key roadblock in making gen AI more available within the enterprise. Before Opsin, Oz worked in product management at high profile technology and security companies for most of the last decade, including Fireeye and Abnormal (where he met his co-founder James). In the episode we discuss everything from the origin story to the technical challenges of applying access control to these outputs and how to maintain current records despite a constantly changing access landscape. Website Sponsor: VulnCheck