Meet The Disruptors: Eyal Elyashiv of Cynamics On The Three Things You Need To Shake Up Your Industry
An Interview With Fotis Georgiadis
Get your product out for real time feedback: One of the things that I’ve learned is that when you develop something, you should try to get it out there as soon as possible to as many potential customers. Many of the improvements to our preliminary product were conceived that way.
As a part of our series about business leaders who are shaking things up in their industry, I had the pleasure of interviewing Eyal Elyashiv.
Eyal Elyashiv is the CEO and Co-founder of Cynamics. Cynamics is a premium Next Generation (NG) Network Detection and Response (NDR) solution built for MSPs, MSSPs, and companies of all sizes. It’s tremendously simple for clients to implement and manage, providing threat detection and total network visibility at a fraction of the cost of comparably effective solutions.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dig in, our readers would like to get to know you a bit more. Can you tell us a bit about your “backstory”? What led you to this particular career path?
It all started with an incident at my previous company, which dealt with next-generation solutions for public safety. I had a big deal that I’d worked on for over a year with the city of Atlanta. We’d set the date on which we were supposed to sign a multi-year contract that was worth several million dollars. Ten minutes before the meeting, I got a call from the city’s CTO letting me know that the meeting was canceled due to a huge cyber-attack they’re experiencing. Obviously, I was devastated, but it also really piqued my interest. I wanted to understand exactly what happened.
Since I knew many of the people in the city’s IT department, I started to ask questions like, “What kind of solutions do you use? Who are the vendors you work with?” I realized that on paper, everything was legit. They used the best solutions available. They used security measures, and it didn’t make sense why they experienced this major attack. So, I started to fully investigate what the cause of this attack was and what happened.
To make a long story short, I realized that the actual attack started on the broader level, which is the county level. The bad actor started the attack on the county level, and then through the interconnectivity of the network, reached the city. That was the lightbulb above my head starting to shine; we needed to build something that could support this large-scale environment without creating too much of a mess over the network. I decided to leave the company and put all my effort into Cynamics. This is how the idea was born.
Can you tell our readers what it is about the work you’re doing that’s disruptive?
Chief security officers, CIOs, network operators and security analysts can’t get a complete and accurate picture of what’s taking place in and around their organizations’ networks without total visibility into all traffic flowing in and out of the company network and that leaves room for threats to infiltrate, unseen and undetected.
There’s a wide variety of legacy network detection and response (NDR) solutions to choose from, but most existing options are laborious, expensive to implement and decreasingly effective. At Cynamics, we are changing the game with a premium cybersecurity solution that’s tremendously simply for clients to implement and manage — at a fraction of the cost. We offer the only Next Generation NDR solution in the market using standard sampling protocols built-in to every gateway, patented algorithms, AI and machine learning, to provide threat prediction and visibility at speed and scale.
Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? What lesson did you learn from that?
During one of my busier weeks of back to back meetings, I was invited to present our offering to the CEO of a prospective partner company. I was escorted into a meeting room where I found a suited gentleman awaiting me. While he did not seem exactly like his LinkedIn photo, I thought I may be confused having met so many people that week and did not want to appear rude. I introduced myself and proceeded with my pitch. It was only 10 minutes into the presentation when the actual CEO of the company walked in. I did not lose my cool and improvised, saying I was “only warming up the atmosphere,” Luckily it was well accepted, but since then I make it a point to validate who I am speaking to.
We all need a little help along the journey. Who have been some of your mentors? Can you share a story about how they made an impact?
As a young combat soldier in the Israeli Defense Forces, while going through a challenging training course, one of my most memorable mentors was my commander. He taught me, through personal example how to focus and make correct decisions under extreme pressure. I often go back to those moments and lessons learned and find them useful in the tough world of business and entrepreneurship.
In today’s parlance, being disruptive is usually a positive adjective. But is disrupting always good? When do we say the converse, that a system or structure has ‘withstood the test of time’? Can you articulate to our readers when disrupting an industry is positive, and when disrupting an industry is ‘not so positive’? Can you share some examples of what you mean?
The current situation is that despite all the great technology available out there, organizations that invest significant funds to keep their networks safe still suffer from cyber-attacks. Cyber-attacks are becoming more sophisticated and can detect blind spots within the security solutions of large networks, so I wouldn’t say current solutions have withstood the test of time.
Cynamics is offering a solution which addresses this real need in a completely different approach. Not only do we provide sample-based coverage to large networks with no blind spots, our technology is more affordable so that not only the Fortune 100 companies can afford Cynamics but also small municipalities and businesses. That’s pretty much the message that we bring to the industry. We take something that was invented three decades ago, which is the sampling protocols that are built into the network devices and use it to bring a lot of value to customers. I think from a disruption perspective, the technology that is so low-touch, self-provisioning and affordable — that’s in its own a disruption.
Can you share 3 of the best words of advice you’ve gotten along your journey? Please give a story or example for each.
- Get your product out for real time feedback: One of the things that I’ve learned is that when you develop something, you should try to get it out there as soon as possible to as many potential customers. Many of the improvements to our preliminary product were conceived that way.
- Pick the right people/partner to join you on your journey: It may sound like a cliche, but I’ve learned this the hard way — it’s critical to pick the right partner for this journey and it’s a heck of a journey.
- Be open to criticism but trust your intuition: I used to ignore my gut feelings about certain decisions and listen mostly to the advice of more experienced people. But at the end of the day, I’ve learned that the only person who can come to the right decision is me.
How are you going to shake things up next?
We are headed towards changing the face of cyber security by making it accessible to all types of organizations, regardless of the size and the complexity.
Do you have a book, podcast, or talk that’s had a deep impact on your thinking? Can you share a story with us? Can you explain why it was so resonant with you?
The Alchemist’ is one of my favorite books. It is a magical story about a shepherd boy who travels the world in search of a coveted treasure. The book takes the reader through his adventures, ups and downs, and many challenges. Santiago, the protagonist does not give up until he finally holds on to the treasure. I find inspiration in Santiago’s perseverance and devotion. I think you should always pursue your dreams, and you will eventually make them come true. Even if sometimes it feels impossible you need to continue pushing forward. As long as you believe in it, it exists.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
I started my developer career as a Mac developer so, not surprisingly, I was a big fan of Steve Jobs. A mantra that I’ve followed for years is a quote of his — “Less is more.” That resonates with me. Even when I’m trying to build products and companies, I try to stick to this mantra, “Less is more,” and that’s what we do with Cynamics.
You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. 🙂
I am a man of technology, and as such my influence and leadership would be through technological innovation. In a world where more and more of the population relies on network communication based services, I believe that bringing the message of reliable and secure online data would do a lot of good to an enormous amount of people.
This was very inspiring. Thank you so much for joining us!
Meet The Disruptors: Eyal Elyashiv of Cynamics On The Three Things You Need To Shake Up Your… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
