Transcript
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Of course being at the IDF and leveraging those kinds of um attack verticals um with non human identity so I was on the other side um I can think as an attacker I know what they are looking for in order to penetrate an environment and Bridge an environment um and that’s uh that’s exactly the knowledge that we’re using over a rento in order to prevent such cases [Applause] [Music] welcome back to another installment of the NextGen case study series on this episode today we have Itzik Alvas who is
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the co-founder and CEO of entro security a pioneering company in non-human identity and secret Security Management with a background that includes serving in the elite cyber security unit of the IDF and holding senior security positions at Microsoft it’s has led entro to develop cuttingedge solutions that address the critical issues of securing digital secrets and non-human identities which is why we’re excited to welcome him to the program IC welcome to the show thank you thanks uh thanks for
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having me Devon yeah it’s an absolute pleasure um I’m excited for this conversation because I think that there’s a lot of experience that you have that that is going to be uh useful to our audience um to start things off I’d love to get uh kind of a quick um history of kind of who you are where you came from and how you found yourself as the uh co-founder and CEO of entro security hey yeah for sure um so I’m MIT alvas I’m the the co-founder and CEO of entro um inro security as as mentioned helps
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security teams to fully automate um and protect nonhuman identities life cycle um and secure Secrets um so I started my cyber security Journey back at the IDF the Israeli Defense Force I was on the offensive side of cyber uh but then going into the Public Market worked on the defensive side so prior to my role at entro I was in charge for the internal security of one of Microsoft’s clouds prior to that I was a ciso chief information security officer uh at an Healthcare organization and uh basically I was
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bridged a few times VI non human identity which are uh basically service accounts API Keys connection stream those are um the credentials that applications are using in order to access and authenticate against Services they need like databases or storage or so for um so that Microsoft we will breach twice using an exposed secret um and and yeah you know I started to think about how can we mitigate those problems going forward I couldn’t find any solution out there um so I joined forces with a friend of mine
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adami I knew him from the Army and and that’s how inro came to be wow that’s a exciting Story coming from um the actual experience of being on a team where unwanted scenario plays out and you get to have firsthand experience on what that’s like and then that contributing to your ability now to have some foresight and look for Solutions uh to prevent this kind of stuff from happening that’s really um really powerful as a as a kind of a purpose behind the work that you’re doing and I
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um I think that’s super exciting so kind of walk me through some of uh what your kind of main responsibilities or day-to-day tasks are now that you’re uh kind of in full swing with with entro yeah uh you know being a CEO you’re responsible for everything within the company uh so of course the product product road map um the go to market uh the R&D side um pretty much pretty much everything The Bard um you know competition out there pretty much everything I am blessed because I have a
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great team my co-founder Adam Shri is leading all of the product and are in this side um it’s based in Israel in T and then the goto Market are based um in the states um at Massachusetts Boston uh but yeah basically that’s a that’s a lot of work for sure um you know when we started we pioneered the non identity verticals uh there’s a there’s a lot of solutions out there but we we are the first platform uh that fully protect and automates the life cycle of non identities uh so when we started it was
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mostly around educating the market um you know finding the right solutions for the different problems uh but now we it’s uh it’s mostly around you know positioning uh the right messaging and uh making sure that everybody knows we are we are the best platform out there I wonder uh and I’d be curious if you’d share with us how some of those early experiences um with with Microsoft and IDF how that kind of shaped your approach to the work that you’re doing now it shaped a lot of what I’m doing
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now so again at Microsoft I was bried wi and with no solution out there we needed to build our own uh so that basically shed everything we’re doing now are the experiences of the brides over there of course being at the IDF and leveraging those kinds of um attack verticals um with non human identity so I was on the other side um I can think as an attacker I know what they are looking for in order to penetrate an environment and Bridge an environment um and that’s that’s exactly the knowledge that we’re
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using over a rento in order to prevent such cases so nonhuman identities are currently the second most frequent attack Vector out there and the number one most costly attack to an organization um and again I was blessed with a great team a lot of them also served in same unit that I had um in the Army so we have a lot of a lot of interesting knowledge how to prevent those um and that’s why we’re of course the global leader in the non space when I was looking into the work that you’re doing and and some of the um
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some of the businesses that you’re serving I I noticed one thing that um kind of stood out to me which is a lot of the businesses that you work with are are pretty big there’s a lot going on um there are many players in each of them that are that play a role in the decisionmaking process in um implementing you know your Technologies or your Solutions I’m curious if you kind of walk me through what um The Experience would be like for a business like that to kind of like find you and then and then work with you and and
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continue to kind of be inside of your ecosystem right yes uh you are correct we are selling to large Enterprises um from small Enterprises to to huge ones um we customers from Fortune 100 and so forth so yes there’s a there’s a lot of uh of people over there with decision powers or some kind of uh interest in what we’re doing and educating all of them um and solving all of their problems is a challenge from you know one end but on the other end it’s helps us to improve our product and improve
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our offering because if they are asking for more fishes or something that we’ve missed then we can go ahead and build that and that will probably um you know extend our our platform and be of value to other organizations uh to reach that audience it’s not always easy um again we did pick the great vertical because um again that’s the the second most frequent takech Vector out there so organizations are actively looking for Solutions in this space and being the first one and the most mature company um
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with the most comprehensive platform out there um that’s uh that’s for sure helpful uh we have the biggest number of customers so a lot of references uh but but yeah you know in terms of um lead generation uh events is great for us SDR and then inbound as well because again customers are actively searching for Solutions in this space right yeah so you you have a pretty steady inbound flow of people who are kind of curious about the solutions and that that serves it I I I I think that’s um a really good problem to have
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but it but it might pose a bit of a challenge in terms of kind of managing these relationships um how how do you guys measure your performance in in how you are working with these relationships and kind of developing things because it’s such an arbitrary thing right like I get the black and white of it not a customer now a customer like that’s an easy metric to me measure but all of the small details in between that I wonder if you could share uh some of your Insight in in terms of how how you guys
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are measuring that success right that’s a that’s a great question I mean how can you measure a relationship right um I feel that um like most of us are practitioners that are selling to practitioners we had that problem before uh we’re actually building the tion the platform that we wanted to use so I feel like it’s easier for us to keep those relationships because again we are practitioners that are dealing with other practitioners in the same space uh how how are we measuring it that’s a that’s a great
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great question for me you know everything is a funnel like you’re starting with uh 10,000 leads and you know only 500 of those are starting a PC and and only 200 are being you know finishing uh the the funnel and be and being a customer but um measuring I assume measuring the relationship is um you know how many meetings do you guys have um how much time is spending with one another like there’s Summits out there blacket is is fast approaching uh we meeting a lot of people over there I assume that’s a that’s a great way to
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measure relationship if if they you know spend time with you or not um and again I think it’s easier for us because we came from the same background right yeah creating a solution that you needed made it possible for you to help other people who who need that solution and that’s um that’s that’s really useful as a as a strategy to kind of understand your customer is understanding yourself and then and then using that information to to attract the right people is really powerful so um when it when it comes
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to managing all of these relationships and keeping everything kind of organized is there any types of tools and technologies that you’re using that that help keep that um in line or is this more of a like personal um relationship one-on-one kind of individual management scenario I think a little bit of bow uh um some of them are mostly personal relationships um and some of them you know are more straightforward business uh we are using of course CRM uh in order to keep track of everything I’m a
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I’m a data guy I love I love data um so of course we we’re using a lot of different tools to store all of the leads that we’re talking are with what have we said what did they say what are the problems if they have a project if so when um and basically everything everything that we can and then we’re using uh we’re using the data in order to forecast what will happen next quarter and the quarter after that um and so forth so how many how many customers or prospects said uh they will have a
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project coming up in the next quarter and then that’s a project that we will compete in and how many of those will result in customer and so forth so we became pretty good at forecasting stuff uh but that’s basically because we’re keeping all of the data we can um and using it in order to develop some sort of a forecasting algorithm uh having said that again I do have a lot of friends in the industry um and um a lot of those are are personal relationships and not you know another another line or
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another row in my CRM being that the way that you’re building the business is on the back of these personal relationships I wonder if there is room for new technologies like Ai and automations and things like that inside of the sales process is that something that you guys are leveraging or are you staying a little bit more human Centric in your in your approach to sales and marketing n Ki is very helpful in terms of marketing and sales um I think um like the main capabilities ofi is taking
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a lot of data and sped out you know a conclusion it can be can be sometimes the WR conclusion but still like taking a huge portion of of data and spitting out and and conclusion and and I think it’s great for both marketing and sales uh you do need to review that manually uh but but yes of course we are we are using that um also I think in terms of marketing and content writing and so forth uh AI is very very so could you share with us maybe some recent um challenges that you’ve overcome or or wins in the business that
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um because just the space is so unique I wonder if there’s something in that experience that maybe we can um extract value from yeah I mean we’re winning deals again the competition um every every other week um I think I think we’re doing that uh again because we’re the most mature company um with um the most number of logos and customers uh so we we believe in in fast feedback loop uh that means that because we have a big number of customers we can extract feedback on our product from
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them and understand what else they need what we can improve and we’re we’re implementing it quite rapidly then we’re using it in order to better our solution better our platform create new features um and then using that in order to win more deals so I think that’s a I’m not sure it’s Unique for us but I think that’s uh that’s a great approach to go about it uh if you need to you know perform better than others just use your customers because they will tell you what they need and
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then you can go ahead and replicate that to other customers as well I think that’s the main approach that uh that we’re using um and and of course having you know invented uh everything in space um so that that’s that’s pretty powerful and and helping us a lot um but definitely customer feedbacks I mean we are every on that yeah the the feedback loop is such a powerful tool to um keep an open channel of communication that is both candid and useful in in the development of the tools and the
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solutions and things that you’re providing for your um for your for your client base when when it comes to that’s a win-win approach because our customers are getting a better you know getting answers to what they need then we’re getting a better platform to s to other customers right so when it comes to like managing that data uh what’s your approach to to leveraging it in a way that is going to be useful for the development of products Solutions Services business all that kind of
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stuff right know we’re keeping uh we’re keeping scores on everything uh so you know the the easiest one is um like 80% of our customers as for the same feature uh of course we’re going to be in the tide uh if only one of them eslo it then we will take it internally um try to figure out if it’s something that is needed um maybe reach out to our customers reach out to Prospect and say Hey you know if we add that would you use that and if so for what and what problem will it solve and so forth um
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and then maybe add it to the road map and and sometimes we are not adding it to the road map but uh but basically we have a we have a scoring mechanism at our product um and where every new request or every new idea is uh is being scored and according to that scoring it will be developed uh or not yeah that’s really powerful to be able to take the information and actually tangibly use it in a in a way that that benefits everybody um when it comes to take like implementing because I I get that the
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technology itself is constantly evolving the availability of tools and things kind of coming down the pipeline um are are always changing adapting and what have you what’s your approach to um filtering through that the noise to to find useful stuff do you do everything inhouse or do you look for Partnerships external to kind of help augment your efforts we have a lot of Partnerships out there uh we love better together I’m I I believe it I believe thatth you know if we developing best of breed non human
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identity security and another compan is developing best of breed automation we can work together in order to fully automate remediation um so we can find the risk and then we can use them in order to automate the remediation to remediate that risk um and so forth uh so we have a lot of Partnerships out there um and yes I’m to beli in in better together that’s on the product side but then there’s also the goto Market side channels resellers bars GSI um yeah I mean if it’s a win-win
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then we should do it yeah that’s uh uncommon to find someone so open to collaboration and and um building new things and finding ways to continue to serve which is probably attributing to a lot of your success um and as things continue to evolve I wonder uh it’s like if you could share perhaps some of the things that you’re looking forward to what are some of the goals uh that you and entro are working towards and what are you kind of excited that’s on the horizon for the business right so uh weedly solving um
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one of the biggest pain points in the Cyber industry um and that’s a huge huge Market uh there’s a lot to do uh so yes we’re we’re leading that market but still there there’s a lot to do over there um currently we are able to discover in reach uh find risks um alert on them abnormal behaviors for non identities ration and a lot more but still there’s a lot to be done in order to fully secure um and manage non human identities and and and we’re we’re doing that uh there’s uh there’s a lot to do
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over there the market is huge uh and that’s our FOC area uh for the for at least the upcoming the upcoming few years um so yeah I can go into details um I’m not sure you want you want me to go into details but uh but we’re got to stay in the non identity market for for a while yeah that’s um that’s good that there’s an an abundance of opportunity in the space which means there’s room for Innovation and uh more opportunity to to create Solutions and especially in a a day and age where this stuff happens
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so quickly that um you know we just it’s hard to keep a finger on the pulse of of the whole thing so um admirable that that’s part of the work that you’re doing uh just to you know extend on that like gnil one of the best analysts in the world just released a report St stating that uh for every human employee there’s at least 45 non-human identities uh we’re seeing at our customer base 92 so for employee you have you will probably have 92 service accounts API Keys programmatic access Keys uh that’s
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something that organizations are unable to handle without a proper platform in place um and when you think about it like how many human security tools human user security tools you have um and how many non human Iden security tools you have within your organization uh so yes the the opportunity is uh is a is amazing of yeah that’s really powerful um we’re kind of coming to the end of our time here together and and I’m uh very grateful for the wisdom and insight that you’ve shared with us IC so thank you
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for that um on that note to kind of wrap things up here I wonder if there’s a um a piece of advice that you could offer somebody who’s in a similar position to you who’s facing similar challenges um what what’s one piece of advice that you would offer to help them kind of you know stay in the game overcome the challenges and and and really um Prosper on the other side so so a few ones um first of all validate everything you’re doing uh with your customer base like don’t build something your customers
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don’t want you to BU um always always ask for feedback um and understand what they want so that’s uh maybe the first one the second one is always always H the best like if you need to pay a bit extra for salary do it always hire the best um because your team is actually the one is going to who’s going to build everything you’re dreaming of building um so maybe those two uh follow those two and and you you’ll be all all right sure very Sound Advice if somebody wanted to reach out to you it’s it to
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pick your brain further or perhaps work with you how would one go about doing that yeah um multiple ways you can look me up at LinkedIn it’s alvas or go into entro security website ENT H security uh just look it up at Google and you can book in the port with me over there as well beautiful okay I’ll make sure to link to all that stuff in the show notes um and if you wanted to get in touch with us and our team for any reason for anybody that’s watching and listening you can visit nextgen.com
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otherwise that’s it for this episode and I will see you in the next