Asaf Lifshitz Interview with CISO Magazine

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Volume 3 Issue 6 


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Interview of 

ASAF LIFSHITZ, 

Co-Founder and CEO of Sayata Labs 

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Rudra Srinivas 17 

Asaf is the co-founder of Sayata Labs, an enterprise-grade risk 

assessment solution for the cyber insurance industry. Before founding 

Sayata Labs, Asaf was a Consultant at the Boston Consulting Group, 

advising clients on their strategic business issues. After graduating from the 

IDF’s elite Talpiot Program for R&D leadership, Asaf worked as a Physicist 

in the Ministry of Defense. He holds an MBA from Harvard Business 

School, an M.Sc. in Physics, and a B.Sc. in Physics and Mathematics. 

CISO MAG | June 2019 CISO MAG | June 2019

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1. How did you decide 

to start a business? 

The idea for Sayata Labs emerged 

when my partners and I identified 

a unique opportunity to bring our 

cybersecurity and data science 

expertise to bear for small and 

medium-sized businesses. We 

noticed that the cybersecurity 

industry had several structural 

problems, and after conducting 

thorough research, determined 

that the cyber insurance industry, 

in which actual performance 

can be measured, is perfectly 

positioned to tackle these 

challenges. Of course, we knew 

that addressing these issues would 

require a team with critical skillsets 

in cybersecurity, insurance, and 

data science. We assembled a very 

strong team with a proven track 

record of success in these fields 

and developed a solution which 

provides deep insights into cyber 

risks, at scale. 

2. What are the biggest 

challenges you face 

as the founder of a 

startup? 

As a startup, we need to be 

extremely agile and quick. One 

of the biggest challenges we face 

is quickly growing our team to 

keep up with customer demand. 

The cyber insurance industry is 

rapidly expanding and that puts 

more pressure on us to meet that 

demand. Additionally, cyber risk 

is a sensitive topic, especially for 

the SMB market, and requires us to 

educate the market as to the nature 

and depth of the risks involved. 

This takes time, but the hackers 

aren’t waiting. 

3. How are you 

tackling the awareness 

problem? What does 

your outreach to SMBs 

look like? 

We emphasize that small and 

medium-sized businesses 

are increasingly aware of the 

importance of cybersecurity 

and the potentially devastating 

consequences of getting it wrong. 

They’ve seen the effects of cyber 

attacks up close: 43% of all cyberattacks 

target SMBs. But complex 

threats require sophisticated 

solutions, and SMBs don’t usually 

have the time and proper toolset to 

deal with these threats effectively. 

With Sayata’s advanced technology, 

SMBs receive full visibility into 

their organizations’ level of risk. 

We designed our system to be 

intuitive, with a seamless user 

experience for customers even 

if they have limited technical 

knowledge of cybersecurity issues. 

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The system is created in a way that 

no special knowledge is required 

and the system is extremely 

simple and quick. Our focus is 

on what’s most important for SMB 

leaders: providing a clear, full view 

of an organization’s risk exposure, 

so we can enable them to address 

any issues or vulnerabilities 

facing their businesses. For those 

who want to delve further into 

the technical aspects, we provide 

deeper explanations and userfriendly 

recommendations. 

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4. What’s Sayata’s 

approach in assessing 

a company’s risk 

exposure? 

Sayata’s data science and 

cybersecurity experts understand 

the vulnerabilities, exploits, and 

potential attacks that cause cyber 

breaches. This, combined with 

our insights into factors that are 

predictive of actual cyber losses, 

enable us to pinpoint a company’s 

risk exposure with exceptional 

accuracy. 

A major challenge is that there is 

generally a tradeoff between the 

depth of a cyber assessment and 

the ease of using it. We created 

advanced technology to enable 

the use of deep analytics, but 

also made it simple, efficient, and 

understandable so it can be used 

at scale. Additionally, as the cyber 

threat landscape evolves, the 

solutions need to evolve as well. 

We are dynamic and check for a 

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range of relevant factors so we can 

detect these changes quickly. 

Sayata is bridging the worlds of 

cybersecurity and insurance so 

that together we can improve 

SMBs’ cyber posture at large. 

5. You have held a 

wide range of titles 

before founding 

Sayata Labs. How was 

your transition from a 

researcher to a CEO? 

Looking back, it’s clear that 

everything on my path prepared 

me for Sayata Labs. As a researcher, 

I dealt with complex problems 

in experimental and theoretical 

physics, which required me to 

better understand the world, 

create models, and check their 

assumptions to obtain results. 

As a commander in an elite 

technological unit in the Israel 

Defense Forces, I learned to be a 

successful leader among dozens 

of extremely talented individuals. 

Then, as a Harvard Buisness school 

graduate and a consultant at BCG, 

I learned how to identify and 

address strategic challenges in 

various industries in a methodical, 

scientific way; in this case, I was 

studying not electrons and protons, 

but the actions and behavior 

various actors such as cyberattackers 

and defenders. Once we 

started Sayata, this diverse range 

of experiences equipped me to 

effectively lead our company in 

our mission to apply our team’s 

wealth of knowledge, technical 

expertise and strategic insights to 

help organizations address their 

most urgent problems. 

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Asaf Lifshitz Interview with CISO Magazine

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