21 minute read
Gily Netzer A Remarkable Leader in Cybersecurity and Marketing
Gily Netzer
CMO
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Cymulate
Gily Netzer
A Remarkable Leader in Cybersecurity and Marketing
omen have been at the forefront of many Windustries with their exemplary leadership skills and diligence, and cyber security is no exception. Leading by example, women have not only changed the landscape of the industry, but also have inspired other women to pursue a career in the cyber security. Amongst those women, one is Gily Netzer.
An avid marketer and a results-driven leader, Gily is a marketing strategist and veteran leader with 20 years of international B2B Cybersecurity experience. She currently serves as Chief Marketing Officer at Cymulate, a SaaS-based Continuous Security Validation platform that makes it simple to know and optimize security posture of companies all the time and empowers companies to control and safeguard their business-critical assets.
Gily's experience includes marketing leadership roles in startups such as Cymulate, Illusive Networks (of Team8) and large brands, including Symantec. She speaks at events (e.g., GRC World Forums - PrivSec, Ladies in Cyber, Wonder Women in Tech) and is a contributor to publications such as Forbes, Help Net Security, CyberSecurity Ventures, IT Toolbox, etc. She is also one of the few CMOs that can claim to have served in an F-15 squadron.
Gily is also an Advisory Board member and volunteers as a mentor to students at the Hebrew University, educating the next generation. She is building teams across regions, establishing new technological categories, forming a marketing machine, market leadership, relationships to drive business and consistent growth year-over-year and is passionate about Business to Human (B2H) style marketing.
Educating Market About Game-changing Technology
Gily mentions that Cymulate’s journey since inception has been fast paced, challenging and exciting. Success has come through the execution of its short-term and long-term vision, constantly fine tuning its positioning, messaging, and platform to better meet its customers’ needs. It has also come by educating the market and creating awareness that its game-changing approach and technology can solve critical enterprise and service provider security posture validation needs. Gily has built a multi-faceted marketing team which includes product marketing, brand, and corporate communication, digital, field, channel marketing teams which has put Cymulate into the top leadership position within security posture category and led to better brand awareness, demand generation, pipeline acceleration, retention of hundreds of customers and more.
Transitioning from a Well-Known Company to Startup
As a Chief Marketing Officer for her current and last cybersecurity startup, transitioning from a well-known, large company, Symantec, was a big change. Where both startups focused on innovative, new cybersecurity technologies, Symantec focused on well-established customer base with commodity solutions which were easier to sell. At Symantec, Gily worked on a large marketing team where she could focus mostly on field and channel-driven demand generation. Coming into the startup atmosphere with limited resources and team, she learned to be very agile, resourceful, and
knowledgeable. The change was necessary for her to take both startups from an unknown brand to the market leader position, each in their respective categories.
Educating and Offering Value to Security Professionals
Second challenge Gily witnessed was COVID-19. Cymulate crossed out its existing 2020-2021 plan and devised an entirely new strategy to fit the challenges COVID brought along with it. People were concerned about their health, job security, providing for their families, working from home, and had no physical events to interact and build relationships with, and more. It is at that point that the company moved over from a pure B2B strategy to a Business to Human (B2H) strategy, thinking of the prospects/customers and partners’ hearts and minds and doing things different. It began doing more for the community, reaching people from a different angle, thinking repeatedly what the value it can create for them and seeing the ROI (Return on Investment) as a longer term KPI.
Talking about the impact of the pandemic, Gily shares that the Business to Human (B2H) strategy Cymulate incorporated at the start of the pandemic is here to stay. Cymulate will continue to give back to the community and to be mindful of the impact the pandemic might have had on its prospects and fine tune its marketing accordingly. The company created a free,
Cymulate challenges, assesses and optimizes security posture against threat evolutions, simply and most comprehensively. “
online, cyber education program to educate and offer value to security professionals. It extended an offer to use its Continuous Security Validation Platform for 2 free months as COVID broke, and people started working from home with less security controls, just to enable enterprises and security professionals to be safer. The goal is long term and trust-based relationships. The team at Cymulate also thinks about the environment and as a thank you to new customers, they plant trees on their behalf. They have increased community benefit by offering referral to existing customers who bring them new customers by making contributions on their behalf to their favorite charities.
Having Optimized Cybersecurity Controls and Incident Response Plans
According to Gily, advancements and improvements come when one combines technical development with innovation. Enterprises with modern DevOps change minute by minute and with attackers and threats evolving daily, it is essential for enterprise IT security assessments to maximize coverage, customizability and come with a constantly updating series of tests to ensure that their cybersecurity controls, incident response plans and personnel are optimized. The real innovation is realized by being able to do that in an automated and easily understood fashion and to offer it as software as a service which makes it an easy addition with little to no overhead to incorporate and run. Cymulate is the premier continuous security validation vendor. It has created a superior way to assess its customers’ security posture effectively against realworld threats and differentiated itself from the competition by effectively automating everything with software as a service, updated 365/24/7, is simple for enterprises to deploy and manage. The platform is customizable to all maturity levels and enterprise sizes. It is by far the most comprehensive covering the full attack kill-chain, attack vectors as well as purple teaming and red teaming techniques.
Building Skill Sets of Cyber Practitioners
Moreover, Cymulate just launched a free Cymulate Academy with ISC2 Cybersecurity CPE credits associated with the courses which help build cyber practitioners’ skill sets. It has several opensource projects underway that look at automating continuous automated red teaming, DevOps integration with continuous security validation assessments and even automating the incorporation of new attacker tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) into cybersecurity control checks. It would like to bring in changes to security controls in making things easier to manage and run, more automated and controls which have a better grasp on how to measure and convey actual risk in a better fashion.
Optimizing Cyber Posture of Companies Continuously Cymulate enables companies to challenge, assess and optimize their cyber posture, simply and continuously. It has been chosen as the best product for 2021 by F&S and as the leader in Innovation by Frost Radar. Its 5year vision is to be the largest and leading validation company without analysts.
A Note to Emerging Women Leaders
Gily encourages women to step into the industry by saying that there are tremendous opportunities in cyber security industry. If one is a passionate about cyber security and technology, Gily encourages one to study it! She advises, “Also keep in mind that beyond technical roles, there are a vast number of other roles in other cybersecurity domains such as risk management, marketing, and sales as well. I think the biggest advice I can give is to just jump in.”
Lori Sussman
Assistant Professor
University of Southern Maine
Lori Sussman
A Fearless Veteran Educating Future Cybersecurity Experts
Cybersecurity is one of the most critical issues that several organizations deal with today on a global scale. With the ever-growing expansion of digitalization of data, it becomes challenging to protect essential information. Numerous instances of data breaches, ransomware attacks are becoming dangerous threats and heading further into the future, and it will become more critical to build secure cyberspace. However, leaders in Cybersecurity are consistently improving existing technologies, and it is necessary to educate the upcoming generation to utilize their unique take on Cybersecurity.
Lori Sussman, Assistant Professor in the Department of Technology at Cybersecurity at the University of Southern Maine, is one such leader who uses her years of expertise to educate and train future cybersecurity experts. Lori is a veteran who dedicated over two decades of life to the US Army. She now helps organizations build the leadership, technology, and security capability needed for this increasingly global and connected future.
In 2015, Lori was named one of the CRN 2015 Women of the Channel Power 50 Solution Provider by The Channel Company's CRN Magazine for her exemplary record of success accelerating her clients' needs through technology solutions.
A Unique Journey
In a non-traditional path to academia, Lori's career started at West Point as part of the fourth class to allow women into its ranks. Even when dealing with some animosity about women being part of the Corps of Cadets, she learned to "cooperate and graduate." She proudly graduated as a second lieutenant in the Signal Corps, the Information Technology branch within the US Army.
Lori served over 24 years of US Army service with distinction and retired at the rank of Colonel. It was her honor and good fortune to assume various leadership positions culminating in brigade command. She benefitted greatly from the mentorship and the sponsorship of enlightened senior officers and officials.
During her service, Lori pursued and completed four master's degrees, which proved to be an essential factor as she moved from the public to the private sector after her retirement. She explored large corporations, small businesses and also ventured into entrepreneurship. As a result, she got to work for elite high technology companies such as Cisco, Hewlett Packard, and a local South Carolina Fortune 5000 company. Lori managed highly complex, diverse, and active organizations engaged in developing, acquiring, integrating, deploying, and sustaining state-of-the-art business, technology, and security systems for clients in these roles.
Lori felt her calling when she read about the need to move from success to significance in the book "Half Time." So she enrolled in the University of New England (UNE) doctoral program in transformative educational leadership.
In 2018, the University of Southern Maine hired Lori as part-time faculty, and she became full-time faculty in 2019. In three short years, she helped create a new program for a Master's in Cybersecurity, started a community service Cybersecurity Ambassador
Preparing students today for the world of tomorrow.
program, and started USM's Cyber Defense team called the Husky Hackers. Lori states that it has been an exceptional experience watching students thrive and grow.
Leveraging Technology to Teach
The Mission and Vision of USM
The University of Southern Maine (USM) is a unique institution with a mission to provide students with a high-quality, accessible, affordable education. It has comprehensive undergraduate, graduate, and professional programs designed to educate future leaders in the liberal arts and sciences, engineering and technology, health and social services, education, business, law, and public service.
The faculty is committed to fostering a spirit of critical inquiry and civic participation. Both students and faculty enjoy a culture of academic freedom in an environment that advocates diversity in all aspects of campus life and academic work. USM supports sustainable development, environmental stewardship, and community involvement, thus providing resources for the state, the nation, and the world.
Consistent with the USM mission to be a center for discovery, scholarship, and creativity, Lori emphasizes projects, writing, problem-solving, active student learning, application of theory to practice, and measurable outcome-based learning when teaching technology or cybersecurity courses. She evaluates students using critical thinking papers, written case studies, class presentations, small group work, and applied projects in the university and community.
Lori utilizes engaged learning techniques to ensure that all of her students can bring theory to practice by applying their knowledge, skills, and abilities in contexts beyond the traditional classroom and providing application opportunities in the community, the laboratory, and other venues. This engaged learning challenges students because it requires sustained and
focused application, reflection, and collaboration. In addition, she uses real-world examples to focus on technology and cybersecurity activities to understand the issues better.
Putting her students first, Lori creates programs that graduate students with skills, knowledge, and capabilities for the workforce. She strives to immerse students in the technology but with enough creative space to evolve, learn, and grow.
When meeting with a student, Lori examines their values, personality, culture, likes/dislikes, strengths/challenges, skills, attitudes, and beliefs. These attributes inform how one can collaboratively navigate their academic career to land that technology job for which they aspire. She spends a great deal of time making sure that her students achieve the objectives of their college experience. They should have a purpose for their present and lifelong learning.
Finally, Lori wants to help her students to appreciate the larger view of themselves, their university, and their community. Students must see a connection between their experiences at USM and the real world.
Heading Into the Future
Lori focuses on creating programs that increase diversity in the technology and cybersecurity workforce. She recently founded the USM Cybersecurity Awareness, Research, and Education Support (CARES) Center, intending to take advantage of being in the state's fastest-growing region.
USM is a multi-campus university with nearly 20,000 students, making it one of the largest institutions in the University System of Maine. The CARES Center's goals are to create various educational pathways that provide access to underrepresented populations. The university is starting to shape programs that include opportunities related to experiential learning, internships, scholarships, curriculum and workshop development, outreach programs, and applied research. It has a collective goal of increasing the cyber talent and workforce capacity to meet Maine's and private industry cyber needs.
A Note to Younger Ones
In her advice to emerging women leaders in the security space, Lori says, "Be fearless. Believe in your intuition, and don't take no for an answer. "
No business can thrive in the long term without better security systems. Ensuring the security of business-critical data is the most fundamental need of all organizations. Having a strong and most comprehensive platform for ensuring the safety of the most valuable data is essential for the success of businesses. The pandemic has contributed to the shift of more and more businesses into digitalization. However, threats to cyber security are also rising, with cybercriminals finding different ways to hack the information of businesses. Remote work presents a greater number of security concerns for organizations. Combating the challenge presented by cybercriminals requires cyber security experts to provide capable solutions that strengthen the security of the businesses and minimize the threats created by criminals.
Higher dependence on traditional authentication methods is irrelevant as cybercriminals are more aware of breaking the security of such systems. With the increasing number of online threats to security, the requirement for evolved security solutions is currently the need of the cyber security industry. New time demands more evolved solutions. Old ways need to be given for better adoption of new ways for strengthening the security of organizations. Those who don't adopt new ways expose themselves to cyber criminals' attacks on their valuable business details. The outdated security solutions are no longer viable, efficient enough for protecting organizations from increasing and new threats caused by cybercriminals.
As the threats to cyber security are increasing, there is a dire need for expert security professionals. They should come up with ways to prevent harm to the security of the organizations. Key cyber security experts are implementing the latest technologies such as Artificial Intelligence, Big Data Analytics, Internet of Things, Machine learning, etc., in the business units to enhance the security of the businesses. These adoptions of the latest technologies help cyber security experts identify and detect the risks and threats, which helps them prepare well to avoid and minimize the threats. Cyber security experts are also keeping themselves ready with a contingency plan to combat online threats.
The adoption of the Internet of Things (IoT) and Cloud Computing has dominated the cyber security industry. Many cyber security experts are focusing on developing information security solutions using cloud computing. The cloud computing products and services developed on analytics as a service platform help users recognize and mitigate information security threats quickly. These technologies play a critical role in securing the assets of businesses from cyber threats. They provide the most comprehensive platform for maximizing the information security of businesses.
Cyber security experts tap the latest technological potential for creating a strong platform for enhancing information security systems. The growing adoption of the latest technologies will be more crucial for ensuring the protection of the valuable information and assets of the businesses. To ensure better business continuity, cyber security experts need to continuously evolve in their solutions for eliminating all the threats to security systems.
In the future, online radicalization will certainly lead to more challenges in the security industry. Industry leaders need to be prepared enough to develop better solutions, and they also need to come up with contingency plans and strategies. Cyber security infrastructure should be strengthened to enhance security solutions. It is important to protect the privacy and liberty of individuals and businesses, and cyber security experts should take steps to enhance the privacy of businesses. Digital space should not be a ground for cybercriminals by strengthening the security of businesses in all aspects. Internet should be a safe place for everyone. Business leaders and security experts have to combine their business and technical skills to strengthen security in the online environment, which will be the most revolutionary thing from everyone's perspective.
Maximizing SECURITY with COMPREHENSIVE SECURITY Platform
Sivan Tehila
Shaping the Cybersecurity Industry by Building New Technologies and Preparing Next Generation of Cyber Leaders
We are living in a highly complex time where, on the one hand, cybersecurity attacks have become more sophisticated, and at the same time, there are too many security tools but not enough talent in the industry.
Many experts in cyber security are walking an extra mile to address these issues. One such expert, we at CIO Look, came across is Sivan Tehila. A cybersecurity expert and an entrepreneur with over 15 years of experience, Sivan is dynamically contributing to solving the problems in this industry.
She is the Founder of Cyber Ladies NYC, and a Program Director & Professor at Yeshiva University. Besides, she also co-founded Onyxia, a brand-new cybersecurity startup (stealth mode) with the vision to support small-medium businesses to protect themselves in the evolving cybersecurity era. Sivan is a cybersecurity strategist, solution architect, and trailblazer for women in cyber.
Being Involved in Complicated Defense Operations at Young Age
Sivan started her career in the Israeli Defense forces, where she served for ten years as an Information Security Officer. She served as the Head of the Information Security Unit in the Intelligence forces and the CISO of the Research and Analysis Division in her latest positions. During her military service, she got her primary training, and at a relatively young age, she was responsible for building strategies and plans for complicated defense operations and managed dozens of soldiers under her command. Later she joined Rafael, an Israeli Defense industry, and then Israel Railways, where she designed and built a unique and innovative Security Operation Center (SOC) to monitor and protect against potential cyberattacks on the train, which is considered a national critical infrastructure.
The Journey Continues
When Sivan moved to New York in 2019, she joined Perimeter 81, a leading cloud security company, as Director of solution architecture. During her career in Israel, she often felt like she was the 'only woman in the room'. After moving to the US, she noticed that it's the same here. That's when she decided to start a community to empower women who work in the cybersecurity industry and encourage other women to create and develop a career in cybersecurity. That's how Cyber Ladies NYC began.
Creating Next Generation Leaders
Recently Sivan has been nominated as the Program Director for the online and in-person cybersecurity programs at Yeshiva University. She has been teaching at Yeshiva University for two years before starting her current position as Program Director, and that's how she realized that she is enjoying teaching and developing new content. Sivan feels that educating and preparing the next generation of cybersecurity leaders is a critical mission, and she is very excited and grateful for this opportunity.
Sivan also developed a cybersecurity program for Manhattan High School for Girls, and there's nothing more rewarding than witnessing the program's impact on them. Last year, one of her student's parents called to tell her that thanks to her program, their daughter decided to learn computer science in college and planned to continue to the Masters program Sivan is managing at YU. "I can't even describe the feeling I had at that moment," expresses Sivan.
Sivan Tehila
Program Director & Professor at YU, Co-Founder & CEO at Onyxia , Founder at Cyber Ladies NYC
Photo Courtesy Ina Ricardo Lax These are very fulfilling moments that drive Sivan to continue her mission to support the next generation of cybersecurity leaders and hopefully get more women to join them!
Sivan's vision at the Cybersecurity Masters program at YU is to prepare the next generation of cybersecurity leaders, readying them for great jobs and impactful careers. At YU, they provide the next generation of cybersecurity leaders with the tools, mindset, and values to deal with the evolving cybersecurity threats and protections. Also, since women make up only 20% of the cybersecurity workforce, promoting diversity and gender equality in the cybersecurity industry is another vision of Sivan and her Cyber Ladies NYC Community.
Helping Women Find Jobs in Cybersecurity Industry
As part of this year's YU and Cyber Ladies NYC activities, they launched a mentorship program to help women find their first job in the cybersecurity industry. It was a challenging but extremely rewarding opportunity with three successful and unique programs and over 50 mentees participating. Upon completing the program, an astounding 60%+ of the participants were able to start a new job in the field during the pandemic.
“While this is just the beginning for these programs, the potential for positive impact is tremendous. There will be an influx of women seeking to join the cyber workforce, and I am very proud of the impact we have created," asserts Sivan.
Creating and Building Something Meaningful Everywhere
Sivan always keeps moving and sees herself
everywhere she can create and build something meaningful and helpful. She loves working with students, and her long-term mission is to train and prepare the next generation of cybersecurity leaders with 50% women.
She is also extremely excited and passionate about technology and building new products to support these leaders. She believes the technology she is currently working on with her brand-new company will make CISO's and IT managers' lives much easier and support and make their work more efficient, meaningfully improving their company's security posture.
Giving Valuable Instructions to Future Entrepreneurs
Sivan advises emerging women entrepreneurs in the cybersecurity industry that having a strategy is the key. She states, "Like everything in life, planning in advance can help you deal better with opportunities and failures. Same thing when it comes to our Career. Building a career strategy that includes the education and experience you need to achieve your goals." In fact, this is what she and her partners include in their Mentorship program at YU and Cyber Ladies NYC. They are helping their students to build their career paths with the help of leaders in the industry.
She adds,"Get yourself a mentor you appreciate, and trust is another way to learn from someone else's journey and support your career/ business decisions.”
Towards Secured Future
Sivan is a strong force for highlighting the need for greater support for women wishing to enter the bustling cybersecurity space, which men typically dominate. Both professionally and through her Cyber Ladies NYC organization, Sivan is constantly working to spread awareness about challenges and opportunities for women in cyber and the general industry. Currently, Sivan is also working on building a technology that will focus on supporting and improving the security of companies.
