CyberWire Daily - Alon Jackson: Sometimes you feel like an octopus. [CEO] [Career Notes]

Episode Date: April 2, 2023

Alon Jackson, chief executive and Co-founder of Astrix Security, sits down to share his story to rising success. Before being on the vendor side of things, Jackson served in various strategic roles in the Cyber Security Division of the Israeli Military Intel Unit 8200 for more than 8 years, including leading the Cloud Security division and serving as the Head of the Cyber Security R&D Department. His experience in the military inspired him to learn more about the industry and jump to the private sector. Fast forward years later, he co-founded his company to help address security gaps seen in the industry. He mentions how being a start up CEO can be difficult sometimes, and how it may feel as though you're an octopus with all the multitasking that comes with the job. Alon says that one of his main goals as a contributor in this industry is making sure people remember him and his company for years to come, saying he wants to help by " building a company that people kind of know about, remember, and is important in the world." We thank Alon for sharing his story with us. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to the Cyber Wire Network, powered by N2K. and VPNs, yet breaches continue to rise by an 18% year-over-year increase in ransomware attacks and a $75 million record payout in 2024. These traditional security tools expand your attack surface with public-facing IPs that are exploited by bad actors more easily than ever with AI tools. It's time to rethink your security. Hello, my name is Alex. Learn more at zscaler.com slash security. I always wanted to be an astronaut. That's the truth. I ended up founding Asterix, which is not very far when you think of it. And also the name Asterix kind of have the astro kind of prefix into it. But I guess that's my first thoughts of what I want to do when I grow up as a kid. I think I was always quite a geeky guy, you know, started off by building Lego and then building robots

and then building software. But creating, I think, things from the ground up. And this time it's a startup, right? It's a brand new company. But I think that's a big passion that kind of went for years. Prior to being the CEO and founder of Asterix, I actually led the R&D group at Argus, the company that does automotive cybersecurity,

basically hacking into cars and cool stuff like that. And before that, I actually had quite a long army career. So around 12 years at A200, it's the cybersecurity unit in Israel. So my last position there actually left as a major, which is quite a high rank. And the last position there was in charge of the cloud department. So anything to do with offensive operations

and really the other side of the coin of what we're doing now. So that was the last position there. And before that, many different management positions. I actually did my master's thesis in cryptography. So as I said, quite a geeky guy in heart. And before that, I actually met my co-founder and CTO a long time ago. So when I say a long time, it's not five or 10 years.

It's over 15 years now. In the army, we were recruited together to an army military excellence kind of program. So we went through a lot together. Yeah. And before that, as I said, you know, a geeky guy building robots. So, you know, as a startup founder, I think you feel like an octopus, right? You're doing everything. You're doing legal, finance, product, right?

Marketing, sales. You really feel like you have to touch a lot of different aspects. I think specifically with our journey, things are escalating quickly, which is amazing. Really see the company growing. We'll soon reach 30 employees and it just happened in a year and a bit, which is crazy. So every few months, I'm kind of letting go and delegating a big chunk of my time.

So I think my job is kind of focusing and diminishing as time goes by, but really changing all the time. It really changes every kind of two, three months in that sense. And I think the general line is always, of course, kind of thinking, right? How do we want the company to look like in half a year and a year from now? What do we need to do to get there, right? What kind of people we need, the partners we need to help us get to the next step? So these are kind of thoughts I always have in mind. It's a new challenge kind of people we need, the partners we need to help us get to the next step. So these are kind of the thoughts I always have in mind.

And it's a new challenge kind of almost every day. So I think a very bottom-ups approach, and I think this is kind of how a lot of the folks in Israel, at least from the cybersecurity industry, you know, it's kind of a small bubble, right? I think this is how we kind of were grown up in the unit A200. The ranks don't really matter in that sense. You know, A200 is an army, right?

But it really functions not very much as you would expect with the line of chain of command. And you could really, you know, listen to everyone and take everyone's opinion into account. So I think this is really something I'm taking with me. And a good complementary to that, which is something that we're embracing very much as, you know, as a startup, is, you know, despite having to listen to everyone

and, you know, getting all the voices in the same room, you have to get decisions, right? And you have to run fast with decisions. And the idea is really to fail quickly and learn from it. Look around and understand that innovation never ends. Technology moves forward and moves fast, and security always falls back, right? So looking into the security industry

that might look intimidating and very crowded, right? Technology won't stop. There's new stuff. There's always a new ai thing that is coming out so without good brakes and without good seat belts right you can't really drive the cars these days but this is how cars started off right um so really there's always room for innovation uh and new companies in this space and you know also remember that it's all about people in the end despite very being, very technological

and always needing to be the cutting edge, the bleeding cutting edge of what's going on. Really, it's all about people in all sense. I think the main goal is maybe two. One, building a company that people kind of know about, remember, and is important in the world, right? And being one of those companies that people know about. But not only that, after I know that I've built an organization

that is the dream organization I would always want to be at. So it's a place where people can really fulfill themselves to the fullest, you know, get the most exciting and challenging missions to do and enjoy, you know, a good both work life balance with the hard challenges and the place where, you know, people really want to wake up go into the morning or log into their zoom and encourage their friends to come over and just be one of those best places to work at right so really being like a role model for employers Cyber threats are evolving every second, and staying ahead is more than just a challenge. It's a necessity.

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