Secure Ventures with Kyle McNulty

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

Kabir is co-founder and CEO of Leen, which is creating a unified security API to enable simpler integrations of security tooling. As Kabir will immediately tell you, he has no background in cybersecurity. However, he does have extensive experience with growing partnerships and sales numbers in industries where he has no background. He worked in business development for the last 15 years across a variety of tech companies including NativeX, Kiip, and Typeform. As he tells in the episode, he very carefully and patiently assembled the founding team, and the problem Leen is addressing then emerged as the imperative from their extensive whiteboarding sessions. Now, after a hot start, the team is in the middle of key strategy decisions that will determine the future of the company.

Website: Leen

Sponsor: VulnCheck

This episode is a re-release of a conversation I had with Uri back in the beginning of 2022. It is truly one of my all-time favorites because of how well he illustrates the evolution of fraud prevention in financial services over time. Rest assured, he will be back on the show soon to talk about his new company which was in stealth at the time of this recording.

His new company's website

Our sponsor, VulnCheck!

Andy is CEO and co-founder of BreachRx, which provides incident response management tooling to help organizations respond effectively, consistently, and in accordance with legal requirements. Andy has a JD, an MBA, and a philosophy degree, which combine for a unique skillset. He worked in data breach litigation early in his career, and before starting BreachRx he was a Director for a government consulting group specializing in technology litigation. BreachRx ties together his experience across his career, as he is uniquely knowledgable about the legal complications that arise when managing cyber incidents. In the episode, we jump from the evolution of data privacy to the importance of dedicated communication channels for breach response to the personal liability of executives in cyber incidents.

Website: BreachRx

Sponsor: VulnCheck

Craig is co-founder and CEO of Bleach Cyber, which is building a product for small businesses to manage their holistic cybersecurity posture in a streamlined fashion. Before Bleach, Craig was COO and co-founder of Cyvatar which is a cybersecurity as a service offering for SMBs. Craig has 15 years of experience as a CISO or equivalent, including at companies such as Monster.com and Fujitsu. In the episode we touch on his journey from CISO to founder, the comparison of cybersecurity for extremely small businesses to B2C, and the strategy behind their go to market approach currently in-play.

Website

Sponsor: VulnCheck

Vivek is the CEO and co-founder of SquareX, which is building a Chrome extension to help users secure their web browser activities. Before SquareX, Vivek founded and led Pentester Academy, one of the leaders in online cybersecurity training. Pentester Academy was acquired by INE, which then led to the birth of SquareX. In the episode we discuss his story of learning penetration testing skills and building educational resources along with the pros and cons of offering an extension-based product compared to a complete browser as seen by others in the space.

Website

Sponsor: VulnCheck