CyberWire Daily - Oren Koren: Crossing music and cybersecurity. [Career Notes]

Episode Date: December 17, 2023

Oren Koren, Co-Founder and Chief Product Officer from Veriti sits down to share his amazing story. Before entering the vendor side of the cyber world, Oren served for 14 years in the Israeli 8200 unit where he led a variety of cybersecurity activities and researches that eventually earned him four 8200-unit cyber innovation awards. When he left the Israel Defense Forces, he joined Check Point Software to lead their AI-based innovations and advanced data analytics projects that redefined threat hunting and SIEM applications. This eventually inspired him to start his own company, with fellow co-founder Adi Ikan. Oren shares that he had a love for music growing up, and wanted to be a musician, saying music was the catalyst to him becoming interested in the cyber field, saying "I believe the music helped me a bit with my career in cybersecurity." We thank Oren 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. Thank you. Learn more at zscaler.com slash security. My name is Oren Koren. I'm the CPO and co-founder at Verity Security. I wanted to be a musician. I've started to play violin at the age of four until today.

The thing is, the first encounter I had with cybersecurity or any kind of relations to network and computers was in high school, in the music of high school, when I played in a band when we went to the radio and we wanted to win. So I needed to do the research in the time of high school in parallel of playing and just pushing myself ahead.

But it taught me a lot about how to look forward on data because when you play the violin, you need to remember that it's not about the note you play now. It's about 10, 20, or 50 notes ahead, because you want to listen to the music while you're playing. I believe the music helped me a bit with my career in cybersecurity. I finished school when the first degree was music, and then I wanted to move to computer science and math that I finished.

When the question was, what now? Because I like the music, I like to surf, and definitely like cybersecurity from the office side in A200 unit. But after doing 14 years of mathematics and computer science and the degrees, and definitely doing cybersecurity, what will be the next phase? And it's not how can I combine, but what should I do now? And I think the journey was not only in the academy, the main journey was in the unit and in the army. And it taught us a lot. They give us the opportunity to serve and to help, but they give us the opportunity to learn

and to try. And I think the journey just started when I joined the 200 unit and just started second when I finished the serving then. And then I moved to the industry. When I served after 14 years, I realized I need to go out, to go out to the industry. And I spoke with some of my commanders that are now big in the industry. me and I spoke with some of my commanders that are now big in the industry. And they told me, before you go to do your own venture, try to understand.

Try to understand customers. Try to understand the field. Just be patient and learn. So I moved from the engineering to checkpoint security. And there, when I was on the CTO team, I think my main question of the day-to-day from my manager there in the CTO was, what are the challenges that customers have that we can resolve and we should? Or what is the repetitive pattern you see? Now, across my career, my focus

was on log analysis or threat analysis. means consume lots of data now there was amazing projects amazing projects in all the ecosystem and the network in the endpoint in risk management in vulnerability assessment tool in all of those but the challenge is still there you have to try to solve in multiple ways i think this path um across the years um brought me to the position i am today to be able to consume data from one hand, but the second and most important part to understand the challenge of the customer from a product management perspective.

And that's when I realized I really like the product management position because you understand the challenges the customers have, but then you try to find a solution for them. So one of my commanders in the army told me in the past, you can come to work. I want you to work. I want you to be the best you can.

And I will trust you, first of all, and I will give you all the support that you need. That means if someone will try to do something that is the opposite that you think, I will support you. If you will need budget, I will support it and I will push. But I will just ask one thing. I will ask you to do an all-in with me.

I will ask you to be fully transparent with the things that we need to improve, but also fully transparent with your work and push really, really hard forward. I started out in the army as just a state of mind. Give everything and you will get everything or anything that you want. And that's what I saw also in Checkpoint in my career because I went there, you get everything if you give everything you can to the organization you are in or at.

You want to get an impact or you want to put your impact in other places, you will get the ability to do that and we will allow it to you. So the idea is if I support you, if you trust me, if you trust the process and the company and the product, and you understand that you have where to go, it's not just let's go to work. It's really deep. That's the state of mind. I believe any organization with that state of mind will have zero churn in employees, first of all. And second, the most important part, you will be able to release a lot of good products

and features and services because you will give your employees the ability to shine. They will give you everything that you want to be successful and the company to be successful. company to be successful. It's all about giving the audience or giving the employees or giving the customers a chance. Because maybe you are not correct. You need to be humble enough to state, I know what I'm doing. I know that I have the vision, but maybe I don't really know. Maybe I'm not really into the details to understand exactly

what's going on behind the scenes. And my employees and my other colleagues know better than me. It's an open discussion. It's something we need to do with our employees, and we do that. And even if someone is not agreeing

with that, this is fine. And all of us had that in our career. I think we have those kind of discussions of things that we do not agree on a monthly basis, maybe, on things that we think the product should go right or should go left, but it was the strategy they look at you

and they want you to decide and tell them, we go right, I own the company, it's on me and I will take the decision. So I think it's more complex, but it's divided between small to big. I want to be remembered as someone that listens. That means if someone wanted to say something, if someone had a challenge, if someone wanted just to make a call and to state, I have a problem, I need your assistance,

even if it's not in my professional to assist or not my position, I want you to remember that I was there because it's not on these small features and small decisions. It's about not just the feeling. It's about the idea of letting them know because it's not on these small features and small decisions. It's about not just the feeling. It's about the idea of letting them know that you are there and if they feel good with you personally,

to be able just to call you and to state, I need your help, and they know there will be no judgment. You will just help them with anything they need. I believe that's the best position you can be. Thank you. by businesses worldwide. ThreatLocker is a full suite of solutions designed to give you total control, stopping unauthorized applications, securing sensitive data, and ensuring your organization runs smoothly and securely. Visit ThreatLocker.com today

to see how a default deny approach can keep your company safe and compliant.