CyberWire Daily - Bat El Azerad: Find your niche to bring to the table. [CEO] [Career Notes]

Episode Date: March 12, 2023

Bat El Azerad, CEO and Co-founder of mobile phishing protection company novoShield, shares her personal account of her experience as a female leader in the cybersecurity field as well as some insights into how far the industry has come and where it is headed in terms of the gender gap. Bat El speaks about how she grew into her role of becoming a CEO, by sharing where she started and how she got involved with novoShield. She share's that being a woman in this industry can be tough and so she shares some advice, saying "so you have to be very focused and to find the right niche to bring something to the table because the competition in this industry and the level of innovation, um, is, is great." Bat El hopes that throughout her time in the industry she hopes people remember her for her vision, and the mission she is helping to create and maintain at her company. We thank Bat El for sharing her story. 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. Thank you. Learn more at zscaler.com slash security. Hello, my name is Batea Zarad and I am the CEO of NovoShield. I wanted to be an actress, but I was always very creative and trying to write plays, write scripts. I think I knew I'm going to go towards the marketing direction, but at the beginning it was more of acting, screenplay, theatre, things like that. So to be honest, in terms of managerial skills, I think that the best university was Israeli Army.

I served as an officer for three years and you just find yourself when you're 18. I think it took me like one year to understand what responsibility is and what managing is and to understand that I like complex challenges. After the army, I went to Los Angeles. I went to Santa Monica College over there. And while being a student, I started to work in a very small media agency back in 2001. We used to do some email marketing. And that was the first time I understood how the internet works and what is email marketing and the potential of advertising and marketing a product online. When I went back to Israel, I just joined a very small startup and I just started there as customer support. But I was fascinated by how the female and how male side are looking at the same site. And then I started to write some product documents and conversion suggestions and few models.

And I was just, you know, doing my shift in support. And the owner of the company came one day and like, who is Battelle? And then he sat with me, he spoke with me. And after like one week, he decided that I'm going to start manage a different conversion department. I stayed in this startup for six years and I learned about B2C in terms of acquisition and media buying and SEO and everything about product and I think that was very meaningful for me because I was very lucky

to experience all different channels in marketing and understood exactly what I want to do. I worked in few global companies, B2C and B2B. I was in the gaming industry, fintech, a little bit of software. I did lots of US market, lots of European market. I always join a company and start building out from scratch everything, the operational and the marketing. After eight years being a CMO in a very large company in the trading industry. I left and I took about four or five months of vacation doing completely nothing, trying to think what I really want to do right now. And I decided that I was always fascinated by cyber. What is cybersecurity? And I was also fascinated by how to market an app.

It's very challenging. So luckily, I heard about the opportunity in NovoShield in the beginning of 2022. And they were looking for a CEO with an experience in marketing such as I have. So it was a great match. It's still a great match. And this is how I joined NovoShield. I only deal with very independent people and employees who know how to perform, let's say, three or four different professions. So my style of managing is taking very independent people who likes to be independent,

who likes to do a few things and not just like one specific position. And we both benefit from it. It's a huge personal road to work this way. But this is how you bring people to have a vision of what they're doing. And you will be amazed by most of the best suggestions and ideas that were from them and not from me. So this is my style of working, always, not only in NovoShield. It is very difficult to explain

your cybersecurity product in a way that you will, like in one sentence, differentiate it from the competition that everybody else knows. I would definitely recommend to focus on a need. One sentence differentiated from the competition that everybody else knows. I would definitely recommend to focus on a need. Because I think it's going to be much easier to market, much easier to present it.

And most importantly, to make people understand what you're doing because not everyone understands what cybersecurity is. And when somebody is reading something about a new product, he wants to understand what exactly you are doing. The first thought that an individual or a business will have or an investor, oh, they're probably doing what X, Y, Z are doing. So you have to be very focused and to find the right niche to bring something new to the table. Because the competition in this industry and the level of innovation is great.

I don't think there is any other industry with such advanced innovation and new products every day. The work I've done in NovoShield, I would like people to remember my vision. We're bringing cybersecurity solutions for micro-businesses and individuals. Until now, they've been left to fend for themselves. I want people to remember that we brought very affordable, easy-to-install and professional solutions

to the individual and to micro-businesses. This is what I want people to remember of our mission in NovoShield. Hey everybody, Dave here. Have you ever wondered where your personal information is lurking online? Like many of you, I was concerned about my data being sold by data brokers. So I decided to try Delete.me. I have to say, Delete.me is a game changer. Within days of signing up, they started removing my personal information from hundreds of data brokers. I finally have peace of mind knowing my data privacy is protected.

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