Transcript
00:00:01
[Music] this is securing success where we get to know the professionals that make up the cyber security sector this episode marks an exciting milestone for our podcast with our first returned guest entro Securities CEO IC Alvis uh IC and I last spoke about seven months ago there have been substantial developments for I’s Evolution as a CEO along with os’s place in the cyber security community so IC I’m happy to have you back seems like we’ve got a lot to talk about back Mark um yeah it’s going to be an interesting
00:00:52
uh interesting podcast yeah um and the first thing we got to address from a personal standpoint the biggest development for you is is most likely your move to Boston from Israel so I’d like to dive into that what drives a decision like that for you and I’ve seen other uh foreign CEOs moving into the United States as their business develops so I wanted to get a sense about what drives that decision for you yeah I I recently relocated to the Boston area just outside of Boston um so prior to the
00:01:30
podcast we were talking a bit about the weather over here and it’s completely different than than Israeli weather so I’m still you know trying to get used to that but uh but the main drivers was of course ENT security and my company um basically I could have moved either to New York or Boston because I’m working a lot with Israel and then I will need the the the Eastern Time Zone um so yeah you know west side is is a bit challenging if you want to work with Israel because that’s 10 hours
00:02:08
difference um but in the Eastern side it’s six or seven depends on the on the day Daylight Saving um so East Side was for sure uh but basically I made the decision uh to be close to the customer base um so we have a lot of customers over in the east side of of the US um and also Boston have a vibrant Tech ecosystem and it’s kind of an innovation H um at least Cambridge so we are based out of Cambridge Massachusetts just outside cross the River from Boston um so a lot of great cyber security
00:02:50
companies are based over here uh and that means a lot of great people are that know cyber security are based out of Boston um so yeah you know we recruited um we recruited some folks over here and then also being close to the customer base um and also being close to some strategic uh partnership um and reaching our goals understood okay so essentially wanting to be close to customers Partners uh other vendors in the cyber cyber security community and you being the head of your organization obviously
00:03:33
it made sense for you to be here yeah definitely um so ento is separated into I guess every company is separated into the development product um design and and so forth and then they go to marketings um which are basically marketing and sales uh and and customer facing relationships um and the go to market is based out of the US so our employees with the exception of one everybody is based out of the US um and then the development product and so forth they are based out of Israel um so when we first started I needed to be
00:04:17
over there on the on the product side and development side of things making sure everything is being built as we expect it as our customers and leads expect us uh to build and as we now you know have have a nice customer base and we have validity around what we’re doing that’s the time for me to move and be more closer to the goto Market teams and help Implement inro um or introduce in to every company that can use it yeah and and I’ve seen that be a big differen maker for uh cyber security
00:05:00
vendors based abroad abroad from us coming here the CEOs the executive leadership coming here that has been substantial differenc maker so from my perspective where I sit from the conversations we have seems like a good choice for you how’s the trans transition been right is it what you expected IC or uh were there any surprises in the move the adjustment to the lifestyle Etc I expected some of it um others I’m I’m still you know was a surprise to me or I’m still getting getting familiar with um so yeah
00:05:42
you know moving from Israel to the US it’s a it’s a big significant change for me and and my family uh so Curr I’m married and and have a dog so my wife and my dog came with me um so my dog at least she used to Chase or tried to chase after cats now it’s uh it’s rabbits so she changed that um and basically you know we changed our obies um Israel is a great and Tel Aviv is a great Beach Town um so that there is more you know surfing and stuff like that and over here it’s ice skating and
00:06:23
skiing so that’s that’s a bit of an adjustment for us uh and of course professionally you know I need to build and I am building new networks um and navigating the local cyber security companies and entrepreneurs over here and and you know customer based over here and basically building out my network which is very solid in Tel Aviv T Aviv is a great cyber security Hub and I’m connected to everybody over there and now I need to create a new one over here so I started prior to the to the
00:06:57
transition um and I’m I’m currently keep building that uh so I guess those are the main the main points around you know changing or or moving um and of course you have some technicalities such as you know open bank account and stuff like that but those are easy enough you know I’m glad you brought up uh you know not only your move but the fact that you brought your wife here with you um a lot of times people expect and say hey Founders should move to the us wherever they are and it makes sense
00:07:32
from a business perspective but many times people don’t take a minute to think about what does that mean for them and their families and uh you know kudos to the family members kudos to your wife for supporting what you’re doing and uh I think it’s a big deal I hope people start thinking about that more because you know we often times we talk about Founders as if they’re something as opposed to somebody and you bringing that to light was really important here um when we reconnected prior to the
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podcast you updated me on intro’s growth as an organization uh tell whoever is listening about that from last time to this time how big is the company what other changes are taking place build um our size in terms of the R&D size the development back in Israel and also think for the goto Market we tripled our size since the last time we talked um we are getting significant Revenue growth uh which is which is great for us and allows us or enable us to grow our team or mandates us to grow our team because
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now you know there’s more stuff that we need uh to develop and support uh and because we are getting that market validation we can we can work towards other logos Brands and and other customers so we need we need that growth uh and of course as long so we are a first mover in the non-human identity and secret security space um that’s that’s a problem I personally experienced a lot of time in in the past maybe we can you know discuss that in the as we continue with the podcast um but since we are
00:09:28
Force mover and since we had the of time to learn that space and as the time goes by we keep learning keep understanding from our customers what their biggest pain points around non human identities and secrets so basically depend our expertise um and that you know enable us to create more features um and more automated flows uh that will help our customers to secure and basically manage the life cycle so those non-human identities within their organizations um so yeah you know we’ve done a lot in a very short period of
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time uh and we keep keep learning and and expanding so you mentioned learning a couple times now several times in in what you just discussed and a lot of that is clearly important because you’re getting more exposure to the folks that will adopt this technology uh you you can have an idea of what’s needed but until you’re talking to those potential customers and customers alike you’re not going to know you’re going to have to upgrade it so you’ve learned a lot from there but you know I’ve got to imagine
00:10:42
uh I’d be blown away if you haven’t learned something about leadership and business ownership uh and Entrepreneurship from when you started to now you talk about doubling the size of R&D tripling the size of your go to market you’re clearly competing and winning to extent for attention in the cyber security space have you learned anything about that part of the journey right about being a leader hiring people making people happy it’s hard the more people you have the harder it is to make
00:11:15
everybody happy um course well any any insights on that front um I’ve been in the cyber security at least in management positions for 15 years now if not more um so I’m and I manage large teams I I so at Microsoft I managed uh over 200 people across the globe um and and and it’s not the same right when it’s your baby when it’s something you’re growing um it’s it’s different um and you know to to continue that uh that learning experience that we’ve talked about um you should at least I
00:12:04
try to learn from everybody and and every everything um you can you can learn from it and maybe then try to understand if you want to implement that that’s different topics you can learn and understand why people are doing something differently than you are and then maybe it’s not the best fit for you and you decide not to do it but you should still still learn uh and yes of course I’m I’m learning a lot from my customers how to best build our solution how to best sell our solution what works what
00:12:41
doesn’t work um you mentioned how to get attention in such a crowded environment as cyber security right uh there are a lot of solutions out there um and and I guess that’s for everybody out there um there’s no magic W out here if you if you are getting attention you are probably solving a real problem and if you are not getting attention you are probably not solving their biggest pain point so secrets and and non-human identities are Curr the second most frequent attack um to an organization and then not only the
00:13:28
second most frequent but it’s the number one most costly and destructive attack to in organization so that’s something that’s a real pain point and I guess that’s why we’re getting uh getting the attention but but for your question uh what did they learn so I’m I’m a doer you know I’m I’m I’m keep doing stuff I I like to do everything and that’s uh that’s not great management because in manag yeah you you know about that you know in management should trust your people let them do it
00:14:03
because they are probably better than you um I have a VP of marketing VP of sales V andd they they are better at what they do than than I am but you know I like doing stuff so delegating more and more that’s something I’m continue to learn for the past 15 years as a manager because I I prefer to do it myself but then I need to delegate I need to trust them and of course course they need you know to validate they are doing as expected and getting the results and and there are many methods
00:14:37
to do that um okrs and and like you know that’s completely different discussion that we can have but uh delegating and trust your team and and that’s a result of hiring the best um and that’s a also reason why I moved to to Boston and and not to New York um you have the best cyber security go to market people over here um so I the best and then trust them to do what they do best of course make sure they are operating and and solving uh the problems but um but iire the best and then and then
00:15:19
delegate um and you know AI is keep making noise right um so we’re in the field of nonhuman identity a is really increasing that problem um so that’s maybe also something that helps us raise above the noise uh because the scale and the growth of non-human identity life cycle management and secret security is getting to the extreme right now because of AI so uh we talked about you getting attention and I know that there’s been some really fun developments we’re going to talk about that but I want to I want
00:16:02
to really reiterate for people who maybe haven’t listened to our other podcast um tell a non-engineer right tell me what is the secret space and specifically when you tell me that I also want you to follow up and talk about the impact of AI because when we talk seven months ago and this is a mindblowing element of our conversation ation I don’t think the AI sphere if we can say that was where it’s at today the conversation was completely different again crazy because it was less than a year ago um so tell us what
00:16:44
is secret security basically and what have what has AI done to develop that space or or disrupt that space security and non human identities so non identities are basically service accounts Cloud access tokens and Etc in the essence of it it’s um it’s credentials that applications are using in order to access their infrastructure so if application needs to access and authenticate against storage database and so forth they need credentials and those credentials are programmatic access keys and those are
00:17:26
secrets um so Secrets I programmatic access Keys applications are using them to access resources access and authenticate against resources and the main problem over here is that developers are the ones who are creating those programmatic access Keys those Secrets those non human identities and they’re doing that without any security oversight so now you have team or many teams of developers that are creating credentials with permissions to access your environments and customers data and they are doing that in an
00:18:07
unsecure matter so they are scattering them around they can you know send them over slack or expose them externally commit them into code um and so forth and and they are doing that without any security oversight and basically what organization needs right now is to understand how many of those non non-human identities and secets they have where are they and how to manage their life cycle so they can decommission programmatic access keid that are no longer in use so they can right size permissions uh so if a
00:18:46
developer gave admin permission over one key and it’s unneeded let’s right side it to the proper uh proper permission it needs um let’s rotate like we are resetting our passwords let’s rotate our secrets let’s store them in a secure location usually those are vaults so basically managing the entire non-human identities within our organization it’s it’s a huge need for security teams right now and that’s what helps entro helps with uh basically automating and streamline the non-human identities life
00:19:25
cycle management um and reducing or eliminating the thre the threats over there uh we also continuously monitoring them for any abnormal behavior so if someone from China is using your non-human identity and you don’t do business with China probably you would like to monitor that and and probably block it uh so we help with that portion and to answer your question now that thei is being built within every organization they are leveraging now ai capabilities those those are more and more secrets that the AI needs in order
00:20:03
to authenticate against the company resources um so we are seeing a drastical increase of non-human identities and secrets at each organization all of which are unmanaged without any proper security visibility um and yeah it will keep on growing so we’re seeing one so for every developer for every one human employee we are seeing 50 nonhuman identities and those usually have the ability to access our customers data wow wow and so was it a difficult lift when AI started emerging um really quickly and now it’s
00:20:56
just here right um and everybody can relate maybe to the chat GPT component the adoption of that is but there’s so much there’s so much more to it right yeah how I mean were you caught off guard and and you don’t have to answer that if if you don’t want but were you caught off guard by that or were you anticipating this would happen and and did you build your product around that anticipation we didn’t build our product around AI uh but we weren’t cat of guard as well so our product is able to
00:21:32
discover all nonhuman identities wherever they reside um in their creation locations in their storage locations exposed ones we’re able to find all of them and we are able to find the ones that are created for AI and by AI um so we haven’t you know 100% focused on AI but we did support it before it became a great thing um so now we are able to help our customers as a I grow within the organization to secure the credentials that thei is actually using um or creating um so yeah we we are definitely supporting that we are also
00:22:19
leveraging AI capabilities in in our product to make it better uh so we definitely definitely feel the pain um so yeah you know so that’s uh that’s the essence of it and I mean I I know all about secet so I mentioned I worked for 15 years and as a manager and some of my latest positions prior to entro so I was in charge of the internal security and and infrastructure at one of Microsoft’s clouds um and there we were breached twice by secrets and nonhuman identities prior to that I was a ciso chief in
00:22:58
information security officer for an Healthcare organization we were breached uh by an unsecure nonhuman identity and a secret um so I know all about that I felt the pain myself um so yeah you know we built our product right so we can give our customers the needed oversight and help them automate that life cycle so their nonhuman identities can be secured what a mindblowing concept all this is especially when you mentioned I think twice just now that AI creates their own credentials and their own
00:23:37
Secrets basically that’s so unbelievable I mean it’s it’s here um so you clearly have something that the market will benefit from uh arguably it needs so that’s also attracted the attention of analysts uh you’ve been competing in competition brag a little bit it’si uh it’s okay to do that these days um tell us some tell us some of these wins that you’ve had from the analyst Community some of the competitions that you’ve participated on and and done well with maybe the latest
00:24:16
twoo uh we won many different prizes um so the latest one was the globy awards uh which is basically designed uh to recognize and celebrate organizations that I achiev a great milestone uh and we we just won that um like maybe a month ago or three weeks and and you know it’s a great it’s a great feeling because it’s not only you know that we are getting validation from external uh vendors and winning competitions and they are validating our product is a great one and you know leading leading the way and
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helping organizations but it’s also a testimonial for the team uh that is working hard that is learning from customers what they need how we can solve their problems and you know it’s it’s it’s great for them it’s great for the team to see hey I mean it’s not our us that telling you you are doing a great job and it’s it’s not only our even customers that are enjoying the product and now their non human identities are managed and secure it’s an external competition that is
00:25:32
saying hey you’ve done an amazing job and and Kudos um for the team uh so globy was the latest one uh prior to that we won gner K vendor that was the the fastest in history um we are a fairly new company and we were the fastest in history to ever received Gartner cool vendor and assume everybody knows Gartner so Gartner is probably the best um analyst group out there um and you know being recognized by gner it’s it’s a very proud moment for us and the team and it it’s also gave us a lot in
00:26:12
terms of you know Market validation Market trust um and and Etc it’s basically saying we are leading that category uh of non-human identity life cycle management and secret security um and again it’s a validation for the hard work and Innovation the team the team is is doing you know a lot of people see these types of awards um or recognitions from analysts and they say okay well that company’s doing cool a lot of people don’t take again the human element into consideration uh and you really you
00:26:55
really communicated that well here uh the Kudos the the validation this is such a hard business to be a part of it’s a hard place to break out into um there’s a million problems that you and your team have to deal with every single day uh so much stress and and for some for somebody a recognized organization a recognized award for people to say you guys are doing a good job Beyond you saying that to your team or something like that um that that is huge I mean that is morale 101 and and I’m so happy for you guys
00:27:36
because that’s what you’re putting in the work and and you need you need something you need some wins and yes Revenue customers is obviously a nice part of that but just to be recognized by your community congrats man I’m I’m very happy for you yeah thanks I I totally agree with that that’s the you know that’s the the the spirit that’s what the the crew needs to keep to keep the moral ey and keep working out for for our customers so uh beyond having some of this Market validation Beyond being able
00:28:14
to monetize your product right sell it uh because you won’t sell it if if people don’t want it or it’s not good so there’s something to it you’re selling it you’re getting these recognitions and awards uh but I can’t imagine that’s the only thing that kind of keeps you ick the head the head of the snake so to speak chugging along right so are you are you doing the ice skating or what what what are you doing to acclimate yourself to your new environment manage stress and and just
00:28:47
be a human being um beside walk which I mostly do uh yeah I’ve got a lot going on you know with with the move so lately I mean even buying Furnitures you know that’s uh another thing people just don’t my time yeah yeah yeah we need we need sofa right yeah well so yeah but uh but yeah so I’m I’m I’m taking Saturdays off um and basically spending that with uh with my wife so now that we are in a new place um we have a lot a lot to see so you know doing tourist stuff um and
00:29:31
seeing places that uh around Boston um so yeah you know that’s what we now do also exercise um but it’s it’s mainly it’s mainly around work I I truly enjoy it um you know you build something you had a problem yourself you were breached by it you try to find a solution couldn’t so you started the company and now it’s growing um and you are getting great feedback you’re winning prizes customers loves what you are doing and and you actually protect them from what you’ve
00:30:08
experienced uh as a security leader so I love seeing it grow um and and that’s where I spend most of my time but of course I mean Saturdays are with the family uh sighting museums ice skating which I’m I’m a complete natural I’m I’m great at it yeah I just see you doing spins right now yeah um but yeah you know enjoying the new the new environment good and I can’t think of you know there’s there’s several cities here where you you can get it but I can’t think of uh too many better places
00:30:49
in Boston actually do some of that sightseeing I mean clearly a ton of History around uh the United States the museum so you you shouldn’t be lacking in that I’m very happy to see your progress your success I hope in another six seven months we can do this thing again and uh there will be more interesting developments to talk about so um congrats it’s a this is a there there’s no end right it’s just growth um some struggle breaking through some walls but you’re doing it um and I’m happy for you
00:31:28
man it’s always a pleasure um being at your podcast yeah thanks uh thanks again for having me all right we’ll do this again IC we’ll talk to you [Music] soon