Asaf Lifshitz Interview with CISO Magazine
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UNDER THE<br />
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<strong>Interview</strong> of<br />
ASAF LIFSHITZ,<br />
Co-Founder and CEO of Sayata Labs<br />
16<br />
Rudra Srinivas 17<br />
<strong>Asaf</strong> is the co-founder of Sayata Labs, an enterprise-grade risk<br />
assessment solution for the cyber insurance industry. Before founding<br />
Sayata Labs, <strong>Asaf</strong> was a Consultant at the Boston Consulting Group,<br />
advising clients on their strategic business issues. After graduating from the<br />
IDF’s elite Talpiot Program for R&D leadership, <strong>Asaf</strong> worked as a Physicist<br />
in the Ministry of Defense. He holds an MBA from Harvard Business<br />
School, an M.Sc. in Physics, and a B.Sc. in Physics and Mathematics.<br />
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1. How did you decide<br />
to start a business?<br />
The idea for Sayata Labs emerged<br />
when my partners and I identified<br />
a unique opportunity to bring our<br />
cybersecurity and data science<br />
expertise to bear for small and<br />
medium-sized businesses. We<br />
noticed that the cybersecurity<br />
industry had several structural<br />
problems, and after conducting<br />
thorough research, determined<br />
that the cyber insurance industry,<br />
in which actual performance<br />
can be measured, is perfectly<br />
positioned to tackle these<br />
challenges. Of course, we knew<br />
that addressing these issues would<br />
require a team <strong>with</strong> critical skillsets<br />
in cybersecurity, insurance, and<br />
data science. We assembled a very<br />
strong team <strong>with</strong> a proven track<br />
record of success in these fields<br />
and developed a solution which<br />
provides deep insights into cyber<br />
risks, at scale.<br />
2. What are the biggest<br />
challenges you face<br />
as the founder of a<br />
startup?<br />
As a startup, we need to be<br />
extremely agile and quick. One<br />
of the biggest challenges we face<br />
is quickly growing our team to<br />
keep up <strong>with</strong> customer demand.<br />
The cyber insurance industry is<br />
rapidly expanding and that puts<br />
more pressure on us to meet that<br />
demand. Additionally, cyber risk<br />
is a sensitive topic, especially for<br />
the SMB market, and requires us to<br />
educate the market as to the nature<br />
and depth of the risks involved.<br />
This takes time, but the hackers<br />
aren’t waiting.<br />
3. How are you<br />
tackling the awareness<br />
problem? What does<br />
your outreach to SMBs<br />
look like?<br />
We emphasize that small and<br />
medium-sized businesses<br />
are increasingly aware of the<br />
importance of cybersecurity<br />
and the potentially devastating<br />
consequences of getting it wrong.<br />
They’ve seen the effects of cyber<br />
attacks up close: 43% of all cyberattacks<br />
target SMBs. But complex<br />
threats require sophisticated<br />
solutions, and SMBs don’t usually<br />
have the time and proper toolset to<br />
deal <strong>with</strong> these threats effectively.<br />
With Sayata’s advanced technology,<br />
SMBs receive full visibility into<br />
their organizations’ level of risk.<br />
We designed our system to be<br />
intuitive, <strong>with</strong> a seamless user<br />
experience for customers even<br />
if they have limited technical<br />
knowledge of cybersecurity issues.<br />
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The system is created in a way that<br />
no special knowledge is required<br />
and the system is extremely<br />
simple and quick. Our focus is<br />
on what’s most important for SMB<br />
leaders: providing a clear, full view<br />
of an organization’s risk exposure,<br />
so we can enable them to address<br />
any issues or vulnerabilities<br />
facing their businesses. For those<br />
who want to delve further into<br />
the technical aspects, we provide<br />
deeper explanations and userfriendly<br />
recommendations.<br />
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4. What’s Sayata’s<br />
approach in assessing<br />
a company’s risk<br />
exposure?<br />
Sayata’s data science and<br />
cybersecurity experts understand<br />
the vulnerabilities, exploits, and<br />
potential attacks that cause cyber<br />
breaches. This, combined <strong>with</strong><br />
our insights into factors that are<br />
predictive of actual cyber losses,<br />
enable us to pinpoint a company’s<br />
risk exposure <strong>with</strong> exceptional<br />
accuracy.<br />
A major challenge is that there is<br />
generally a tradeoff between the<br />
depth of a cyber assessment and<br />
the ease of using it. We created<br />
advanced technology to enable<br />
the use of deep analytics, but<br />
also made it simple, efficient, and<br />
understandable so it can be used<br />
at scale. Additionally, as the cyber<br />
threat landscape evolves, the<br />
solutions need to evolve as well.<br />
We are dynamic and check for a<br />
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range of relevant factors so we can<br />
detect these changes quickly.<br />
Sayata is bridging the worlds of<br />
cybersecurity and insurance so<br />
that together we can improve<br />
SMBs’ cyber posture at large.<br />
5. You have held a<br />
wide range of titles<br />
before founding<br />
Sayata Labs. How was<br />
your transition from a<br />
researcher to a CEO?<br />
Looking back, it’s clear that<br />
everything on my path prepared<br />
me for Sayata Labs. As a researcher,<br />
I dealt <strong>with</strong> complex problems<br />
in experimental and theoretical<br />
physics, which required me to<br />
better understand the world,<br />
create models, and check their<br />
assumptions to obtain results.<br />
As a commander in an elite<br />
technological unit in the Israel<br />
Defense Forces, I learned to be a<br />
successful leader among dozens<br />
of extremely talented individuals.<br />
Then, as a Harvard Buisness school<br />
graduate and a consultant at BCG,<br />
I learned how to identify and<br />
address strategic challenges in<br />
various industries in a methodical,<br />
scientific way; in this case, I was<br />
studying not electrons and protons,<br />
but the actions and behavior<br />
various actors such as cyberattackers<br />
and defenders. Once we<br />
started Sayata, this diverse range<br />
of experiences equipped me to<br />
effectively lead our company in<br />
our mission to apply our team’s<br />
wealth of knowledge, technical<br />
expertise and strategic insights to<br />
help organizations address their<br />
most urgent problems.<br />
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