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Yaniv Shachar | Co-Founder & CEO of Cympire

Yaniv Shachar: Creating Cyberworld Safer through Discipline, Innovation, and Education

Since 1990, the internet has taken over the globe, use of the internet is one of the needs in this digitalized world. More than 60 percent of the world’s population uses internet services on their digital devices. Written content, pictures, videos, documents, and a few confidential data are available on the internet. Only a small portion of that data can be considered secured, but the rest is just there on world-wide-web.

A data breach or cyber-attack is happening every 40 seconds, most of the attacks are happening through emails. So, Cybersecurity is a must nowadays. Cybersecurity contains defending computers, servers, mobile devices, electronic systems, networks, and data from the cyber-attack.

Serving and protecting the nation by doing national duty to Co-Founder and CEO of Cympire, Yaniv Shachar, from 2019 he provides security to his clients preventing the cyberattacks. A man with discipline and ethics, took education while serving the nation. As he worked in different organizations at the manager level, he is filled with leadership skills, and the focus is to create a safer world with the help of technology.

Recently, we had conversation with Yaniv Shachar to learn more about the personal journey and how his organization is dealing in the market.

Following is an excerpt of the interview:

Brief our audience about your journey as the CEO of Cympire. 

I started my career in the Israeli navy. I volunteered for the naval combat officers’ course at the age of eighteen (18) and spent the next 18 years as a naval combat officer and commander.

During my service I was able to complete my bachelors’ degree in Economics.

In 2009, I decided to make a change and pursue a business career. I joined a private company – Logic, which was executing mega projects in the homeland security field. I started as Program manager where I led a global group of project teams in large-scale, multi-million-dollar, security projects within the Oil & Gas industry.

In 2013, I was promoted to lead the Project Execution Division where I took responsibility for an extensive portfolio of security programs and projects, globally. My responsibilities included full profit-loss accountability, Projects execution, and both customer and stakeholders’ relationships.

I gained invaluable experience in all the aspects of a senior executive role, and despite this highly challenging and fulfilling time, I completed the Executive MBA program at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

In 2015, I joined Magal Security Systems as part of a management transformation, shortly after the company was acquired by the largest private equity fund in Israel. In addition to leading the Israeli company, my main task was to build and shape seven subsidiaries into the “Integrated Solutions Division” with direct responsibility for the other subsidiaries globally.

Once again, I found myself in a highly rewarding and incredibly challenging environment, culminating successfully when the division was acquired by Aeronautics Group.

After 10 years of senior executive roles in private and public (Nasdaq) companies I decided that I wanted to build something new.

Cyber security relevance increases year over year, and we wanted to build a solution that focuses on developing the human aspect of cyber resilience. We know that the weakest entry point to your organization is through phishing attacks and social engineering. Therefore, your organization invests in state-of-the-art defensive technologies. Unless your response teams know what, they are observing and how they should react, then your investment is not delivering on its potential.

We believe that mission-ready cyber professionals are a critical component towards a safer world. Our mission is to improve cyber professionals’ skills and readiness by providing effective hands-on immersive training in real world conditions – realistic scenarios, using real cyber defensive tools in a safe and challenging environment.

Enlighten us on how Cympire has made an impact in the Cybersecurity training space through its stronghold in the industry? 

We believe in creating a safer world through innovation and education. With that mission in mind, we built the world’s most advanced cyber security training and assessment platform.

Our cloud native platform enables cyber security teams to gain practical and relevant experience that increases their cyber resilience through continuous training and assessment of their cyber skills. The training experience is fully gamified to truly engage the trainees.  Valuable insights are provided for management to easily understand and assess their teams’ skills and readiness level, highlighting, for example, where improvements are needed.  Our “Scenario Builder” allows our customers and partners to create new training scenarios or customize existing scenarios in minutes. It enables you to tailor and/or customize the training to fit your specific organization characteristics. This is a unique capability that helps us grow the business and expand our content offering.

Our platform also comes with a vast library of pre-built simulations. You can easily filter the content by variables such as length of exercise, difficulty, attack vector, and topics (among others). The platform is streamlined to minimize the time and effort needed to prepare or set up the exercises. That is the direction in which we are pushing the industry.

It is very important to mention that the platform is cloud native and completely non-intrusive to your organization. There are no setup costs or infrastructure required and we don’t install anything. All that is needed is a laptop and an internet connection.

Being an experienced leader, share with us your opinion on how the adoption of modern technologies in the cybersecurity sector has transformed the industry and what more could be expected in the near future? 

The cyber landscape is constantly transforming. The defensive tools and technologies are constantly developed and yet cybercrime costs outweigh the cyber technology market by a factor of ten!

That is because threat actors are also ever evolving and improving, but that is honestly one of the things I like about this industry – every day is a new challenge. The development of new and improved defensive technologies takes time, and it can be difficult to keep up with the attackers.

That is why I am a firm believer that the only way to forge an effective defence is through a combination of innovation, education, and a global network of industry professionals to share knowledge. Cloud-based cyber security training is the future. It allows us to deliver training for emerging threats in a fraction of the time it would take to organize an in-person workshop or set up dedicated infrastructure for training scenarios.

Considering the COVID-19 pandemic, and its impact on global economies, how did you drive Cympire to sustain operations while ensuring safety of your employees?

The accelerated digitization changes the way people work and how they interact with content. When we conceived Cympire, we knew that a cloud native solution would be the future of cyber security training

The Covid-19 pandemic has accelerated the digital transformation, emphasizing just how relevant a cloud-based service is. Our clients were able to seamlessly continue their training without compromising their personal safety.

At Cympire we adapted quickly to operate the company in a hybrid model. Working in cyber security means that we are faced with new challenges every day, so we approached it as another challenge for us to overcome. Of course, there are team tasks that are easier to perform face to face and human interaction within a team is paramount, but safety is our priority.

What is your opinion on inculcating gender egalitarianism within the company culture from a leadership perspective?

Unfortunately, cyber security is still a male-dominated field. We hope that the push to get more women into STEM will also mean an increase of women in cyber security. Progress is slow, but I think the rise of start-ups has helped set a new standard for how workplaces can be.

In recent years, people have become much more conscious of the importance of a good work environment. To that end, it is essential to ensure that nobody is discriminated against and that everyone is given the same respect and opportunities regardless of their gender identity.

What would be your advice to budding entrepreneurs who aspire to venture into the cybersecurity industry and the related market?

I often hear people giving the advice to just keep trying, and while that is true, it doesn’t paint the whole picture. If you try the same thing over and over again, you are not setting yourself up for success. You have to try and fail and try again, but what matters is what you do in between those steps. You have to keep learning and truly become an expert in your field. Even if you are confident in your knowledge and skills, there is usually still a lot to learn. If you ever reach a point where you feel like you’ve learned all that is out there on a particular topic, then that is an opportunity for you to push the boundaries and innovate.

Create your own path and give others more to learn. This approach is a significant time commitment, so you should choose your path carefully and go with something you are genuinely passionate about. That level of dedication and passion isn’t a guarantee for success, but it improves your odds.

How do you plan on scaling Cympire and its offerings in 2022 and beyond? 

Cybercrime is on the rise and Cyber professional teams are understaffed, undertrained, and unprepared. Cympire is committed to continuously improving and delivering the best solution possible to help tackle one of the most important global challenges of our time

There are new cyber threats every day, and our team is continually working on new material for our training platform. We will continue to expand our content library to ensure that our clients are well prepared for current threats – and we keep our R&D engaged in developing easier and faster customization and creation of content. We are also working on solutions based on feedback from our partners and customers. I cannot share the details but there is definitely much to look forward to, so keep an eye on our LinkedIn and Twitter to stay up to date.

Cympire is creating a safer world through innovation and education. We invite you to join the ride.