W H A T ’ S
H E R
J O U R N E Y ?
Black Hat hacker to a White Hat hacker and learnt to
protect themselves from a cyberattack by seeing their
use her knowledge to create programs and develop
network like a hacker. Because a hacker trusts no-one,
technologies. The experience transformed Kollender
Gytpol created its own zero trust policy to enable
into the person she is today.
organisations to eliminate the risk before it becomes a real threat.”
After leaving the Army she got a job with Dell EMC in cybersecurity and continued to use her newly-
Kollender has been awarded the 2023 Cybersecurity
acquired talents. She worked there for five years
Women Entrepreneur of the Year from the United
before leaving to start her own company, Gytpol.
Cybersecurity Alliance. This recognition reflects the
There was no program to do what she wanted to do
collective commitment to innovation and excellence
and it was a lot of manual effort, therefor she used
Kollender has in the world of cybersecurity.
her own skills to try to automate it. In her journey the people who have been most Often the first she would know about problems with
important in Kollender’s career have been: Catran
a product were complaints from users. She would
who, she says, helped her become the person she is
approach the vendor and other sources in search of a
today, strong enough to fly on her own; her late father
solution, often to be told none existed.
who always believed in her and taught her to see obstacles as challenges; and her brother.
With her feisty attitude she decided to find her own solution and started to write her own code on a
She says she loves him deeply; he understands her
napkin in a café in Tel-Aviv. She shared her work with
and is her best supporter, her number one fan.
a good friend, Tal Catran, a technology innovation expert. He believed in her, supported her and opened
Kollender says her next big challenge is to open a
doors for her.
philanthropic organisation that will provide a “school within hospitals” to help children don’t get to be
TECH COMPANY FOUNDER
in school at all and learn because they are in the
She needed finance to turn her ideas into a
hospital. So she wants to give them training within
commercial product and found Gilad Raz. He liked the
the hospitals and is looking for people with teaching
idea and brought on Yakov Kogan. The pair decided
credit that know the subject.
to partner with Kollender. The three cofounded Gytpol with Kollender becoming CEO, Raz CTO and Kogan VP R&D. They began working on the first prototype of their product, also called Gytpol, which was released in November 2017.
www.gytpol.com
www.gytpol.com/video/gytpol-short-demo-4-mins-duration www.linkedin.com/in/tal-kollender-gytpol
Gytpol continuously detects and automatically and transparently Remediates device Endpoint Security Gaps caused by misconfigurations. As at September 2022 over three million licences had been sold. Writing on her LinkedIn page, Kollender says: “We created Gytpol to change the way organisations
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