Hetz
Executive Network

Ohad Parush is the Chief R&D Officer at Gong. He has ~25 years of experience in managing large R&D teams in companies like Akamai, Imperva and smaller startups. In the companies that he joined Ohad was in charge of growing the teams to hundreds of engineers and researchers, and building products used by hundreds of thousands of customers.

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"The motto I live by is "DBA - Don't Be an A******". I believe it covers the essence of leadership and management: have empathy, be humble, be curious to learn and hear others but at the same time have the courage to make tough decisions and get stuff done!"

Xiao Guo is currently VP of Engineering at Warner Music Group and previously the SVP of Engineering at Bolt—democratizing one-click checkout for independent retailers and building a decentralized shopper network. Before that, she helped Instacart’s products and systems scale due to the massively increased demand during the COVID-19 pandemic. Prior to that, she was at Uber and LinkedIn where she focused on building consumer products on a large scale. She graduated from Fudan University in Shanghai, followed by a postgrad at Harvard University.

"Embrace your unique qualities and lead with integrity to inspire and empower others as an authentic leader."

Roxy, Vice President of Engineering in the Office of the CTO, leads a charter to accelerate the pace and impact of innovation at F5 – a security and application delivery company.  She advocates leveraging technology, lean-agile processes, and machine and human connections to deliver tangible positive impacts. Before F5, Roxy was the CTO of IoT World Labs leading global teams to create, build, and launch an innovative digital data transformation SaaS platform serving various industries, including transportation, manufacturing, and supply chain. She holds a B.Sc. in Computer Science from the University of Washington with 25+ years of experience in enterprise technology and business transformation.

"Continuously experiment, evaluate, learn and be ready to pivot while staying curious, lean, and stay connected with your prospective customers. Regardless of technology and industry, build a company with security first culture – keep it simple!"

Arkadiy Goykhberg is a capable engineering-focused technology executive with extensive IT, information security, software development, and operational risk management experience, with intimate knowledge of the financial services, print & digital media, enterprise SaaS, e-commerce, and healthcare industries, their associated technical challenges and regulatory requirements. He has a demonstrable track record of success in driving technology transformation programs to improve operational efficiency, eliminate technical debt, accelerate the development of new products and services to achieve business objectives while improving performance, resilience, and reducing operational risk. He is a change agent with a solid technical and business background who effectively communicates and influences at all levels of an organization, including the board of directors, executive management, business stakeholders, and technical staff.

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"Tip for founders: have empathy towards your customers,  and be realistic about the problems your solution can solve."

Cohavit Almagor is a Director of Engineering at Google Cloud where she leads a portfolio of products and technologies in the File Solutions domain whether they are built from the ground up internally or integrated with 3rd party or open source technologies.

Prior to working in Google, Cohavit did several roles in the cyber security domain including acting as McAfee’s Israeli site manager, responsible for the DLP Endpoint solution as well as acting as a Sr. Director of Engineering in PANW responsible for the Endpoint protection product which has evolved to XDR.

Cohavit is acting as a technology advisor in several companies and start-ups and also involved with helping minorities better integrate in the high-tech industry focusing on women. She writes articles, advises companies and lectures in various forums.

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"Do good and good will come to you!"

Yaron Slutzky is CISO at Agoda with 15+ years of experience in the cybersecurity domain. Prior to Agoda, he has been CISO for different companies working in multiple sectors, such as Telecom, E-commerce & Manufacturing. Yaron also lectures in universities and conferences around the world. He is primarily focused on emerging technologies & transforming organizations Information/Cyber Security program by bringing a fresh new approach and methodology.

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"One of the elements of success for a good CISO is to build a strong team with good leaders, which can distinguish between what is important to insist and implement for the business."

Darren Shou is the CTO for NortonLifeLock. In this role, Darren is responsible for technology strategy, innovation and thought leadership. He is a global keynote speaker, a contributor at WIRED, and has been featured in Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, CNN and other major media outlets.

Roi Lavan is SVP of Product Management at ZipRecruiter, helping people connect with their best next opportunity. He loves optimizing and scaling companies and products. Roi has more than 15 years of B2B and B2C product and growth leadership roles, including Lyft, VP product at AOL and VP product at Convertro (acquired by AOL). Roi can help with PMF, product and org scaling, growth, value creation and monetization.

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"Focus on always adding value."

Jeff Trudeau is the CIO/CSO at Chime. In this capacity, he focuses on applying risk management to the company’s business strategy to deliver positive business results with effective risk posture and highly effective security capabilities.Jeff has over 25 years of working as a Security leader in Financial Services, FinTech, Healthcare, Big 4, and at Security software startups. Previously, Jeff served as Chief Security Officer at Credit Karma and helped lead the company to acquisition. Jeff’s team was responsible for protecting over 100 million members and their data. Prior to that, Jeff’s responsibilities included Information Security, Product Security, Physical Security, IT and Fraud Protection.

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"Focus on risk and building strong relationships."

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Aviv Sinai has been Senior Vice President of Research & Development for Taboola since July 2018. He previously served in various capacities at Taboola from 2007, including as its Vice President of Research and Development between 2012 and 2018. Prior to joining Taboola in 2007, he served in the Israel Defense Forces for 6 years as a software team leader in an elite technological unit. Mr. Sinai earned a B.S. degree cum laude in Computer Science from Bar Ilan University and a M.Sc. cum laude in Computer Science from Reichman University (the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya).

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"It’s all about the culture."

An accomplished information and physical security professional, Nick leads the Software Assurance division of Trail Of Bits, giving customers in some of the world's most targeted industries a comprehensive understanding of their security landscape, technology, and infrastructure.

Nick was Chief Security Officer at Paxos Trust Company. Prior to this, Nick served as the NYPD Intelligence Bureau's Director of Cyber Intelligence and Investigations, where he helped the department understand how it investigates online, and how Cyber Enabled crime affects New Yorkers. In 2005 he founded the information security practice at industry analyst firm 451 Research, where he served as 451’s Vice President, Research Operations until 2009.

He is author or co-author of several books, including "Cybercrime: A Primer" with Dr. Eugene Spafford (Cognella, 2024); “Cyber Survival Manual: From Identity Theft to The Digital Apocalypse and Everything in Between (2020 and 2017, Weldon Owen); "In Context: Understanding Police Killings" (2016, Contextual Press/Calibre Press); "Blackhatonomics: An Inside Look at the Economics of Cybercrime (Syngress, 2012)", and was technical editor of "Investigating Internet Crimes" (Syngress, 2013).

Todd has more than 25 years of experience in information technology and security with hands-on roles designing, developing, and deploying enterprise architectures from the ground up. Todd is currently the CISO at both Zluri and Scrut Automation as well as an advisor to a handful of startups. He is a recognized expert in the Life Sciences/Biotech industries in regards to compliance, and the strict regulations with HIPAA, SOX, SOC2 among other regulations.

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"Startups are on the edge of technology and solve problems others have not. Finding the next  wave in innovative startups in an exciting proposition."

Daniel is an internationally recognised information security leader and practioner. He's built security orgnisations at Atlassian, The University of Sydney, and Linktree. He's an advisor to a number of successful tech startups and widely recognised as a technical expert in cloud security.

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"Absolutes are the antithesis of security. Everything is a trade off."

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Fotis joined Coca-Cola Hellenic Bottling Company (CCHBC) as Group Chief Information Security Officer. CCHBC along with its customers, serves more than 715 million consumers across a broad geographic footprint of 29 countries on 3 continents. CCHBC is a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index and has been named as the world’s most sustainable beverage company according to the Dow Jones Sustainability Index 2022. As Group CISO, Fotis is responsible for developing and delivering enterprise IT and Operational Technology strategic roadmaps that protect and sustain mission critical assets and ensure resiliency of business operations during disruptive events. Fotis is also responsible for the data privacy program aiming to build customer, consumer and employee trust and ensure compliance with GDPR and other data protection and privacy legislations and regulations. Prior joining CCHBC, Fotis was part of the cyber security and data privacy practice of EY and PwC.

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"Build cyber resilience across the enterprise - prepare for, respond to, and recover from cyber attacks with minimum impact to organisation's mission."

Al Ghous is the Chief Information Security Officer at Snapdocs, the leading digital mortgage closing platform. Al has been in the cybersecurity industry for over 20 years contributing in different capacities from Product Security and Risk Management to Solution Consulting and Security Architecture. Prior to Snapdocs, Al served as Chief Information Security Officer at Envision Digital and Chief Security Officer at ServiceMax, and led Cyber Security, Cloud Platform and Products at GE Digital. Al has also served in leadership positions at Informatica, Robert Half, Kaiser Permanente, PeopleSoft/Oracle and Ernst & Young.Al is active in the cybersecurity industry and part of several industry organizations and consortiums, as well as a member of several advisory boards. He strives to help founders focus on product, market fit, strategy, and fundraising, while maturing their security posture to attract customers and investors alike.

"The Founder, the VC and the CISO play a vital role in our industry. The Founder brings innovative ideas and relies on the VC to help bring those ideas to fruition. The CISO then provides validation and  becomes the consumer. We don't think about this triad much, but at the end it's a win-win-win... playing itself out over and over again, fueling a robust and thriving industry."

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Vitaly Gudanets is CISO for Netflix. Technology and Security executive with over 30 years of executive leadership experience in the industry. He joined Netflix in November 2021 where he leads the Information Security & Privacy organization. Previously, he spent almost 13 years at Google. Prior to Google, Vitaly has held technology executive roles at Rainmaker, SanDisk, Symantec and VERITAS Software.

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"Security is fundamental. It should be built-in and enabled by default."

Kevin Yeom is a dynamic technical engineering executive with a proven ability to lead multiple teams and projects through all phases of the software development lifecycle. Possessing exceptional organizational skills, Kevin has successfully scaled engineering teams and managed client relationships globally. As the Vice President of Engineering at Encora, he excels in driving success for marquee clients such as KPMG, LG, and Berkshire Hathaway portfolio companies through his expertise in enterprise architecture, cloud-based solutions, and digital transformation. With a strong focus on innovation and a keen understanding of industry trends, Kevin is at the forefront of driving technological advancement providing strategic technology consulting. Kevin holds an MBA from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and a Bachelor's degree in Computer Engineering from Villanova University.

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"AI is here and now, unlocking the limitations of human efficiency, propelling us towards limitless possibilities, and reshaping the world at a pace beyond imagination."

A software engineer and entrepreneur lifer, Sam has been building products for over 35 years, with over 40 issued patents in areas ranging from cryptography, compression, distributed computing, and storage systems to network communications.Prior to returning to EPAM as the global CISO, Mr. Rehman held a number of leadership roles in the industry, including Cognizant’s Head of Digital Engineering Business, CTO of Arxan Technology, and several engineering executive roles at Oracle’s RDBMS product group. He has served as a strategic advisor to multiple security and cloud companies, authoring members of industry consortiums like IEEE, ISAC, Infragard, OWASP, W3C, OSGI, JSR, and others. He is currently a regular contributor in a number of security industry standard groups and publications. Sam is also a certified combat instructor and lives with his family in San Francisco.

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"Stay hungery, stay sharp and stay honest."

Proactive and Analytical Cyber Security Executive with 15+ years leading successful mission-critical security programs across large enterprise infrastructures including Ahold Delhaize, Celanese, Raytheon, PepsiCo, Nike, and MasterCard Worldwide. Partnering with teams across the enterprise to reduce the Attack Surface ensuring we can securely innovate at the speed of business. Respected for engineering and implementing security architectures and programs that quickly identify and mitigate attacks and potential threats. Inspirational and Collaborative leader with a history of developing and motivating high performance technical teams that achieve aggressive objectives.

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"A successful security team’s mission is to enable secure innovation at the Speed of Business."

Seasoned and results-driven IS/Finance executive. Accustomed to leading accounting and finance management, human resources, procurement, vendor relations, recruitment operations, facilities administration, project management and IS Security as well as policy creation, interpretation and implementation for immediate and profitable impact to a progressive organization.

"The key to a successful pitch is having a solution that solves a current problem or improves a process without being overly complicated."

Emilio Escobar is an experienced security leader with a track record of building security functions for hyper-growth businesses. He brings over 20 years of experience in the technology industry building and launching security capabilities and products. Emiliocontinuously pushes the boundaries of how security teams should operate by aligning them closer with the innovation part of the business and building organizations that build and maintain products and services that support the growth acceleration of users with customer experience and satisfaction in mind. He currently serves as the Chief Information Security Officer at Datadog (NASDAQ: DDOG), and is responsible for all the Enterprise Technology (IT), Security Compliance, Trust, and Security functions.

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"Leaders have to think like founders, strategize and plan to be where the puck is going not where it is at the moment."

Philip has background in development, data warehousing, and solution, technology and security architecture; and led Information Security at a FTSE50 organisation, as well as advisory consulting in cloud security and enterprise security for global companies. Philip is currently CISO at the global fintech Revolut.

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"Always nail the basics first!"

Edna Conway is CEO of EMC Advisors, providing board and advisory services to enterprises and governments globally on technology, security, risk management and supply chain resilience.  Edna served as Chief Security & Risk Officer for Microsoft’s cloud infrastructure, ensuring the security and resilience of the infrastructure of Microsoft’s Intelligent Cloud business. She was Chief Security Officer of Cisco’s Global Value Chain, delivering secure operating models for the digital economy.

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Edna is recognized domestically (Presidential Commissions), globally (NATO) and was appointed to the Executive Committee of the US DHS Task Force on ICT Supply Chain Risk Management. Her leadership acknowledgement includes membership in Fortune’s Most Powerful Women community, 2021 Executive Women’s Forum Executive of the Year, 2021 ISSA Hall of Fame inductee, 2021 Top Cybersecurity Leader (Security Magazine), 2022 CSO 50 Award winner and 2023 Top 25 Woman in Technology (Mission Critical).

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"The entrepreneurs of tomorrow must forecast the future, embody the resilience to drive meaningful solutions to market with efficiency and practicality while embracing the winning combination of an open mind and open heart."

Dean is an accomplished Chief Information Security Officer experienced in developing information risk management strategies that reflect business needs. Combining a technical background with excellent academic credentials and strong leadership skills he is experienced in building teams and leading transformational change across Enterprises. He is currently responsible for oversight and leadership of all aspects of Cyber and Information Security for the Burberry Group; a FTSE 50 organisation.

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"Stay humble, work hard and enjoy what you do."

Bhawna Singh is a senior technology executive with 20+ years of experience in successfully transforming products and scaling technology for a global user base. In her career as an executive leader, advisory board member, and investor, Bhawna has worked across multiple high-growth companies to grow & scale platforms from 0 to 100+ million monthly users, led global expansion of products, steered multiple acquisitions and spearheaded innovation to drive user growth and engagement, delivering multi million dollar revenue growth.  

As CTO at Okta, Bhawna leads tech strategy and vision for its Customer Identity product. Bhawna frequently connects with senior executives of Okta’s global customer base, to build deep trust by delivering highly scalable, stable and secure products serving billions of login per month.Bhawna sits on the Advisory board of early stage startups and VC groups. Bhawna’s deep expertise in the area of high-growth, enterprise SaaS, and cybersecurity is frequently published in the press and podcasts.

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"Innovation under any economic circumstance is a business driver, invest in it."

Bradley J. Schaufenbuel is currently Vice President and Chief Information Security Officer at Paychex, Inc.  He has over 27 years of experience in the information security field, has written numerous books and journal articles, possesses BA, MBA, JD, and LLM degrees, maintains two dozen professional certifications, and regularly keynotes industry conferences.  Bradley serves as an advisor to several venture capital funds and startups and was recognized as the Chicagoland CISO of the Year in 2018 as one of the Top 100 CISOs for 2023 by Cyber Defense Magazine.

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"Security organizations at large enterprises are drowning in a sea of cybersecurity products, so founders should make sure their solutions integrate well into complex ecosystems."

Nir Rothenberg is the CISO at Rapyd, managing security and IT for the soaring Fintech company, on a mission to ensure that the future of financial services will be democratized and secure.Prior to Rapyd, Nir led information security at a well known cyber-intelligence company, where he was charged with protecting a high profile and high risk enterprise. Before that, Nir worked as a consultant, helping with some of Israel’s leading companies reduce risk and improve information security. Nir is very active in Israel’s cyber startup scene, advising and partnering with many of them.

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"It's all about collaboration. If you keep a collaborative mindset  - you will be unstoppable."

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Nir Rothenberg featured on Hetz Presents:

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Mr. Jaffe is the CISO at Lemonade Insurance where he oversees the security of engineering, strategy, product, and operations of a cloud-native InsureTech disruptor. With 25+ years of technical experience in security roles, his expertise spans a variety of security domains. He is a prolific adopter of, and advisor to innovative security start-ups. Mr. Jaffe is also a cybersecurity and privacy attorney who understands legal risk and regulation in a way security-only practitioners don't.

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"Founders should be bold in their vision, focused in execution, and honest and direct in their dealings with potential customers. Otherwise, I don't have time for them."

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Ramy Houssaini is the founding chair of the Cyber Poverty Line Institute and a Global Cyber Resilience and Digital Trust Executive for BNP Paribas. He is an internationally recognized leader with a unique background in Cyber Security, Data Privacy, Operational Risk Management and Business Technology. He has extensive global experience in the Financial Services, Consumers Goods, Telecom and Healthcare industries. Prior to his current role, Ramy served as the Vice President of British Telecom in Europe, the Regional head of the Cyber Practice for Accenture and as the Vice President for Global Risk Management at Visa Inc. He is an active member of several industry boards and forums with a focus on Operational Resilience, Data Privacy and Cyber Security. Ramy earned a bachelor’s degree in electrical and computer engineering from McGill University, a Masters of Science from the McCormick School of engineering at Northwestern University, and a Masters in Business Administration from the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University.

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"In cybersecurity, I believe strong leadership drives collaboration with innovators, ensuring we adapt to threats and craft sustainable solutions."

Chuks Ojeme is a USA Today best-selling co-author [Game on: Leaders that last], 2022 judge of the top Global CISO 100, 2021 Top Global CISO 100, a prolific keynote speaker, and an executive with multiple academic, professional and executive qualifications. Chuks has more than 20 years in InfoSec, technology and unique value tech innovation. He is engaged in providing transformative and strategic leadership in business strategy, governance, M&A, divestment, disentanglement,  information security and end-to-end enterprise risk management. He works to unlock opportunities through digital transformation, enterprise process re-engineering and AI capable data analytics.

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"Our world is indeed full of enormous opportunities engulfed in  myriads of challenging obstacles which are not insurmountable. It is difficult to breakthrough these obstacles if we can’t articulate them innovatively. Innovation turns the turbine that generates megawatts of solution energies. When we talk innovation, listen to each other,  and walk-the-talk, we wet the ground for a pumper harvest of opportunities. My mission is to unlock these opportunities through strategic and adaptive risk management, strategic communication, collaboration and adaptive high impact leadership."

Liran is a seasoned technology leader with over 15 years of experience in managing large-scale production environments. Currently serving as VP DevOps, Head of Cloud Engineering at JFrog, Liran oversees strategic initiatives in cloud infrastructure and DevOps practices, driving innovation and efficiency in software delivery and scaling of cloud infrastructure.Prior to his role at JFrog, Liran held the position of Director of Cloud Platform at LivePerson, where he played a pivotal role in architecting and scaling cloud infrastructure to support the company's rapid growth and evolving technology needs.Liran's expertise lies in crafting robust and scalable solutions that leverage cloud technologies and open-source tools to enhance performance, reliability, and scalability. He holds a BSc degree from the Technion - Israel Institute of Technology.

Nico is the CISO at Lyft. Prior to Lyft, he led GitHub Security Lab and was the VP of Professional Services at Immunity while advising multiple Fortune 500 companies. With over 20 years of experience in cybersecurity, Nico is widely recognized for his contribution in offensive security, vulnerability development and penetration testing.

Branden Newman is Senior Vice President and Chief Information Security Officer of MGM Resorts International. Branden was previously CISO of Adidas and Global Head of Information Security at Merck Group. He began his career in the U.S. Military where he served in Army Cyber Command.

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"It is not always the best technology that succeeds, but the ones that best communicate their value proposition and actually deliver on providing that value."

David is currently the CISO at Sequoia Consulting Group, and most recently served as the chief information security officer (CISO) for Databricks, responsible for the security vision, strategy, and compliance programs to ensure customer and corporate information assets and technologies are protected. David has more than 15 years of security experience. Prior to Databricks he served as the chief security officer (CSO) for Jive Software, where he was responsible for Jive's corporate and product security. In addition to being Jive’s CSO, David ran technical operations for Jive’s Cloud platform. David has held director of security roles at Blue Coat Systems and Jasper Wireless, where he was in charge of the organizations' corporate and product security programs.

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"CISOs who who are transparent with their customers by sharing how they protect customer data will build a more secure environment. This collaboration will foster trust and receive important feedback that will improve the company's security."

Nishant Bhajaria is an executive in the cybersecurity and data privacy industry. Having started out as an engineer with a second act as a product manager, he pivoted to data protection before it became a high-visibility topic. Besides building and leading teams at Nike, Netflix, Google, Uber and now Meta, Nishant has also authored the recently released "Privacy by Design: a runbook for engineers" - a deep dive into strategies on effectively identifying, communicating and addressing privacy risks using technical strategies. He teaches courses on LinkedIn Learning on cybersecurity, career development and building inclusive teams, and has also built the first ever privacy engineering certification to offer hands-on training to the next generation of privacy professionals.

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"John F. Kennedy once said, 'The time to fix the roof is when the sun is shining.' The same applies to data-powered companies."

Watch Nishant Bhajaria: Q&A on data privacy with Uber's Head of Privacy Engineering

Mandy Andress is currently the CISO of Elastic and has a long career focused on information risk and security. Prior to Elastic, Mandy led the information security function at MassMutual and established and built information security programs at TiVo, Evant, and Privada. She worked as a security consultant with Ernst & Young and Deloitte & Touche, focusing on energy, financial services, and Internet technology clients with global operations. She also founded an information security consulting company with clients ranging from Fortune 100 companies to start up organizations.She is a published author, with her book Surviving Security having two editions and used at multiple universities around the world as the textbook for foundation information security courses. Mandy also tested and reviewed information security products for multiple publications as well as serving as the author for the weekly InfoWorld security column. She has been a sought after expert in the field, speaking at signature security conferences such as BlackHat and Networld+Interop. In addition, she has taught a graduate level Information Risk Management course for UMass Amherst in the College of Information and Computer Sciences. Mandy has a JD from Western New England University, a Master’s in Management Information Systems from Texas A&M University, and a B.B.A in Accounting from Texas A&M University. Mandy is a CISSP, CPA, and member of the Texas Bar.

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"Saying no is more critical to success than saying yes."

Poorvi Shrivastav is the GM and VP, Products at HubSpot. Shrivastav has 15+ years of experience leading global customer, product and engineering teams. She has launched products and built high performing teams across enterprise SaaS companies and is known for scaling emerging businesses at Microsoft, Salesforce and HubSpot. She is passionate about education, technology, and culture and is an investor and advisor for multiple educational and software organizations. She holds a Bachelors in computer science engineering from India and a MBA in strategic management from The Wharton School.

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"Invest in people, product and processes in that order. Unless you have the right people in right spots, you can't build a great product and finally processes and systems will help you execute on your vision faster."

Eyal Barkay is Sr. Director II of Enterprise & Cloud at Walmart, leading the design, build, and run of one of the largest hybrid cloud deployments in the world. Eyal is Former VP of Infrastructure & Operations for Priceline of Booking Holdings Group, where he led its transformation to cloud, as well as Operational Engineering Excellence reducing failures impact, Increasing developer productivity, and corporate agility. Eyal has extensive knowledge and expertise in the scope of SRE, NOC, Change Management, Enterprise Architecture, DevOPS, CI/CD, Cloud Development, Corporate IT, BizApps, Compute, Storage and Networks.

Located in the NYC area, Eyal assists Israeli companies connect to large design partners and customers in the U.S.

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"To succeed and scale - build your leadership team with people who are more experienced than you in what they were hired to do, listen and challenge where makes sense, and don’t forget to invest in them. Make sure they do the same. Our people are everything; it's rare that tech issues aren't resolvable with the right team in place."

Anton was born and raised in London, Ontario - Canada, as part of an immigrant family from Jamaica. After years working across multiple industries within the start-up technology space within Canada, he moved to Seattle, Washington. He is an experienced technical executive with over 20 years of experience solving business and technical problems spanning gaming, security, hardware and networking. After 10 years running several several businesses within Amazon Web Services, with a strong focus on IaaS and SaaS, he moved to PayPal where he is currently head of engineering for the Digital Wallet. Across his career he has worn many hats, including setting product & technical vision, driving growth strategies for early stage businesses and been a technical leader solving some of the most challenging problems on the internet. Outside of his role as an executive, he is an active advocate for inclusion and diversity as well as an investor and advisor of early stage startups.

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"Success can be measured by the number of hard conversations you've had. Working through, as opposed to avoiding them is a key to success."

Ross Young is the CISO of Caterpillar Financial Services Corporation, a CISO Tradecraft Podcast Co-Host, a Johns Hopkins University Instructor, and the Creator of the OWASP Threat and Safeguard Matrix (TaSM).  Previously, he was a divisional CISO at Capital One and has over a decade worth of experience across CIA, NSA, and the Federal Reserve Board. His expertise ranges from attacking financial services for the federal government to defending organizations by automating defenses in Cloud Security and DevSecOps pipelines. Ross holds master's and bachelor's degrees from Johns Hopkins University, Idaho State University, and Utah State University.  Ross is also designated as a Boardroom Certified Qualified Technology Expert (QTE) and a Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP).

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"If Cyber is in the Business of Revenue Protection, then we need to have a Defense in Depth plan to combat the biggest threats to our companies."

As SVB’s Chief Information Security Officer (CISO), Grant Bourzikas is responsible for developing and implementing SVB’s information security and privacy program. Grant oversees enterprise-wide security policies and global privacy, develops strategies to continuously improve enterprise data security and implements enterprise business continuity and disaster recovery plans. He works directly with SVB business units to facilitate risk assessment and risk management processes.  

Prior to joining SVB, Grant was the Group Chief Information Security Officer at HSBC and responsible for the global cybersecurity posture and program for the bank. Before HSBC, Grant was the CISO and led the McAfee Labs and Data Science division, with responsibility for the Artificial Intelligence function.

With over 20 years of experience in cybersecurity, Grant is a five-time CISO at a Fortune 500 critical infrastructure company, financial services organization, and gaming company. He began his career in public accounting where he provided cybersecurity strategy, implementation, and assessment services to many global organizations. Grant has a proven track record in driving transformational change as well as leading diverse global cybersecurity teams.

Grant was named Top 100 Global CISO in 2020, awarded Security’s Most Influential People in Security 2019, and CISO of the Year in 2018. Grant has a Bachelor of Science in Accounting and received a Master’s in Data Science and Artificial Intelligence from Southern Methodist University in 2022.

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"Recognize that diversity of thought is essential for your success. As you build your teams, look for people who think differently than you and from each other."

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Watch Grant: A cybersecurity discussion with Grant Bourzikas

Bob Chen has 20+ years in technology, with 10+ years leading and building global engineering and operations teams. He is specialized in cloud environments and operations. He has held leadership positions from a 20 person startup to global 100 organizations, and has migrated multiple organizations from on-prem to cloud. Bob's experience spans working with AWS, GCP, Azure, and Alibaba Cloud along with other private cloud providers.

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"An organization must be nimble to stay competitive. Start simple and grow with complexity. Open communication for open collaboration."

Ved has 20 years of experience of building high-scale products and platforms across APIs, Consumer Data Platforms, CPaaS, eCommerce, gaming and enterprise software. Ved is currently the General Manager and VP Engineering for Twilio Email (SendGrid)

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"Speed of execution is the super-power for growth companies."

Amir Jakoby is a VP of Engineering at New Relic. Previously, Amir opened and managed the Israeli site of SignifAI, a startup in the field of AIOps which was later acquired by New Relic. The Israeli branch then became New Relic Israel. Before joining SignifAI Amir was an advisor for early-stage cyber security startups. During his eight years in the IDF serving in the 8200 unit, he led highly classified and innovative cyber security projects and won several awards. He received the rank of a Captain from the head of the Intelligence army service, after only a year as a first lieutenant. Amir has a BSc in Computer Science (graduated with honors) from Reichman University.

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"While companies come and go, the people behind them remain. Connections last for a lifetime: open doors - and endless opportunities."

Yong was most recently Head of Security and Privacy Engineering at Stripe, where he led data security and privacy, security infrastructure, SaaS security, and user security. Prior to that, he was Director of Security and Privacy Engineering at Uber, responsible for data security and privacy, platform and infrastructure security, as well as customer identity and account security. Previously, Yong held executive leadership roles in security product development and security infrastructure at both public companies (RSA Security, EMC, MicroStrategy) and early-stage startups. He received his PhD degree specializing in Machine Learning systems from California Institute of Technology.

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"To stand out among many peers, a security startup needs to articulate a best-in-class solution to real pain points instead of making generalized claims."

After eight years in the 81 Intelligence Unit and four more in startup companies, Pavel joined Tapingo as one of its leaders. After the former's acquisition by Grubhub, he managed the engineering group and served as the general manager of the Israeli site. Currently, Pavel is working for Coupang (based in Seoul, South Korea) building a new business for the company.

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"Always make decisions based on data. when data isn't available - build the minimum you can to get data."

Sumit is a seasoned IT professional with 22 years of IT industry experience, managing teams in product development, professional services and Information Technology. At present, he is working as the CIO of AuitomationAnywhere . In his current role, he is responsible for leading the vision, strategy and operations for entire Global IT team of AutomationAnywhere. Prior to joining AutomationAnywhere, Sumit was CIO at MobileIron, a pioneer in the MDM technology (Mobile device management and security). He is a strong proponent of zero trust  security model. AutomationAnywhere is a cloud first company and Sumit is responsible for  securing corporate systems and data.

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"Cloud technologies have changed the way we operate. Although CIO's are responsible for securing all business applications within their organization, they aren't necessarily the buyer for every purchase. This is making their job harder to oversee how corporate data is managed, secured and flows through an organization. They need to constantly adapt and adopt newer technologies to find the true balance between user convenience and security."

Zak Islam most recently joined AWS as Director, Software Engineering. Previously, he served as CTO at Linktree, covering the engineering and product functions. Prior to Linktree, Zak spent three and a half years at Atlassian as the Head of Engineering for Tech Teams composing of products such as Jira Software, Jira Service Desk, Jira Align, Bitbucket, Opsgenie, Statuspage, and Compass. Before Atlassian, Zak was with Amazon Web Services (AWS) in leadership roles across Messaging and Workflow products between 2012 and 2018. Previous to that Zak operated in technical leadership roles across companies such as Varicent Software and Infor. Zak holds a Bachelor of Science, Computer Science from Ryerson University in Toronto, Canada.

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"Good companies deliver features to customers to solve problems. Great companies deliver solutions to unleash the potential of their customers."

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Watch Zak: How to scale your global R&D team

Chris Cholette started his career in Supply Chain.  After a series of progressively more technical jobs he jumped with both feet into Software Development, eventually becoming Head of Software Engineering at Sunrun.  Subsequent to a successful IPO, he moved on to running the Platform and Productivity group at Mulesoft, and now heads all things SRE and Productivity related at TripActions.

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"Enabling your team quickly and boldly change their application is one of the most powerful things you can do for them."

Art Chaisiriwatanasai is the Chief Information Security Officer at Paylocity, one of the fastest growing companies in the HCM Technology sector. As a lifelong security enthusiast, Art has deep experience in developing, implementing, and maturing information security programs. With a mix of strong technical foundation and an insatiable curiosity, he prides himself on finding pragmatic solutions in working with the business to achieve secure outcomes. Before Paylocity, Art spent the last 17 years in both industry and consulting positions. His last role was spent as Director at KPMG for nearly a decade, where he helped the world’s largest companies solve their most complex challenges. Art holds a degree in Network Technologies with a concentration in Network Security from DePaul University in Chicago.

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"The role of security isn't to say no to the business, it's how to get to yes."

Rachit's experience spans 15 years in the engineering space, leading and mentoring teams globally for companies such as AOL, Netflix, Intuit, and most recently Atlassian, where he was Head of Engineering. Rachit is currently Chief Technology Offier and SVP of Products at Paylocity, which is transforming human capital management (HCM) technology that seeks to improve their clients' workplaces and experiences. The HCM space is evolving and driving much-needed change. Paylocity's values promote a strong culture that not only encourages their teams to listen to their clients while building for the future, but also respect each other's unique backgrounds and values. When he is not in 'build' mode for Paylocity, Rachit loves spending time with his wife and two daughters. Whether it's playing in the pool, cooking together or dancing around the living room, his world revolves around them, and they know it.

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"As a leader, I strive to build high-performing teams by bringing customers closer to the makers. The most exciting part of my job is the people. Once we have the right environment, organizations can deliver value to delight the customer.”

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Watch Rachit: An R&D Conversation with Atlassian's Rachit Lohani

Over 15 years of experience in designing, developing, and launching software products that solve complex business and customer problems in novel ways (e.g combinatorics, robotics, computer vision, artificial and human intelligence), and building passionate teams from scratch to do the same. Experience in leading large (750+) multi-disciplinary teams across software engineering, research and applied science, machine learning data operations, product, design, quality, and program management.

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"Innovation comes at the intersection of limited resources and high expectations."

Rohit Parchuri is an accomplished Security executive with an established record building and institutionalizing Security principles in a variety of organizational domains. He is currently leading the Cybersecurity program at Yext, a bleeding-edge AI Search platform. In this role, Rohit is responsible for building and executing a CyberSecurity program that manifests itself into all information security and product security functions. Continuing in this role, Rohit educates the Board of Directors and executive management on Cybersecurity matters such as maturity, outstanding risks, and remediation strategies on a quarterly basis.In addition to his day job at Yext, Rohit serves as a Board Advisor for Eclipz, California State University and other Venture Capital firms. Rohit graduated from DePaul University at Chicago with a Master's degree in Computer and Network Security Assurance, and recently completed his Masters in Business Administration. Rohit was featured in a number of cybersecurity and leadership podcasts and webcasts over the years and speaks at security conferences on topics ranging from DevSecOps, Security operations, Leadership and Cyber forensics. Originally from South India, Rohit is an avid hiker and tries his hand at tennis every chance he gets.

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"Irrespective of the profession or role, we need people, esp. leaders; who can bring a human element into everything that we do -- in other words this translates into having diverse teams, listening to different perspectives, showing empathy and treating all with respect and recognition they deserve."

Prabhath Karanth is a seasoned security leader with 16+ years of leading global, cross -functional teams across hyper-growth startups, fortune 50 and big 4 consulting firms. He previously headed Security, Compliance & Trust at Tripactions where his organization drives several defensive and offensive security disciplines and serves as the single voice for security both internally to employees and externally with customers. Prior to Tripactions, Prabhath served as a security leader in Adobe for 9+ years where he drove several security programs and initiatives to level up security as Adobe reinvented itself in the cloud and grew from $30B to $300B business. Prior to Adobe, Prabhath was with PwC advising fortune 100 companies on info sec strategy, governance, operations & technologies. Prabhath is active in the security community and advices several startups to solve security and business problems at scale, mentors security professionals and presents in national and international conferences on topics related to security though leadership. His educational background includes a bachelor’s degree in electronics & communications engineering and holds CISA, CISSP, CIPT, CDPSE, ISO 27001 Lead Implementor & PCI ISA certifications.

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"I love being surrounded by passionate folks who are looking to change the industry perspective on a problem. Also, trying to solve a problem in a way that no one else has solved before."

Sagiv is an engineering leader with two decades of experience. In 2008, he joined Varonis, a pioneering data-security startup. Today, Varonis is traded on Nasdaq, and Sagiv is VP of Engineering, managing hundreds of engineers in Israel and abroad. Sagiv is responsible for executing Varonis' vision and strategy; he oversees the entire development lifecycle of the company's technologies, products, and services. Before joining Varonis, Sagiv served as an officer in the Israeli Defense Forces intelligence cybersecurity unit. Then, he worked at Intel and as a freelance developer at several startups. He holds a B.Sc. in Electrical Engineering from the Technion Israel Institute of Technology. Sagiv's expertise: Management, productivity, growth challenges, and development at scale. Sagiv lives in Tel-Aviv with his wife and two kiddos.

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"In engineering organizations, developers' time is the most expensive resource. Show how your product prevents this resource from being wasted. Each dollar counts."

Hardik Parekh is responsible for company-wide global cybersecurity strategy and execution at Five9. Prior to Five9, Hardik developed and matured security programs at companies like DellEMC/RSA, Intuit, Amazon, and Splunk.Hardik brings two decades of global cyber security experience and a builder mindset. His previous experience includes developing product security, enterprise security, compliance, and SOC. Hardik delivered security at scale and speed. Hardik has built a modern, highly automated SOC at Amazon as the Physical Retail unit's CISO. Hardik Parekh co-authored the widely-used OWASP Software Assurance Maturity Model 2.0 and SANS Top 25 Programming Errors.  In addition, he contributed to industry standards such as - BSIMM, and NIST SSDF. Hardik serves on advisory boards of innovative startups and the CompTIA Certification Advisory Committee for security certifications - Security+, CySA+, PenTest+, and CASP+.

Michael is an entrepreneur with over 25 years of executive leadership. He is passionate about IT, and has founded multiple cyber security companies which were acquired by Zscaler Inc. and Imperva Inc. In the past, he has served as VP of Products, building product-lines from the ground up, and held a range of key product and R&D positions at Imperva and the Israeli Air Force.

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"Always seek to leave your comfort zone, work hard and never stop chasing your dreams."

Cybersecurity & Technology advisor, author and executive with 15+ years of repeated success in building Infrastructure Security, Application Security, Enterprise Security, Enterprise Software Engineering teams and programs from the ground up. Leader who attracts top talent and influences key leadership and board to communicate risk-based value proposition, overall roadmap and optimal budget requirements. Accomplished in fostering long-lasting business alliances, driving continuous improvements, and unlocking technology enabled opportunities to bolster top and bottomline growth across verticals such.

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"Founders: Identify and model your core values, it can make the difference between success and failure."

Jacob is a leader Vice President Of Engineering from different Tier-1 companies. He brings 20 years of experience in wide areas of architecture and software development.Jacob managed small to large engineering groups building structured teams in Research, Development, QA, Devops and Automation.His main expertise are cloud, networking, cyber and web3.0 technologies as well as mentorship to R&D and Product managers.

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"In any meeting, in any interaction with people, always think and strive for bringing value to them."

Senior executive with extensive management and product development experience. Proven track record launching new initiatives, driving M&A, building great teams and communicating clear vision. Known for fostering strong customer and vendor relationships with keen analytical and problem solving capabilities. Proven ability to lead development teams bringing complex products to market within budget constraints.

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"Hire great teams and give them the tools, mentorship and freedom to execute."

Sree Sreedhararaj is the Senior Vice President, Chief Technology Officer at Sephora. In his role, Sree oversees Sephora’s technology strategy and road mapping, while also leading across eCommerce Engineering, enterprise architecture, product, and user experience. Sree has developed Sephora’s business to drive innovative thinking and solution generation, to support client needs and forge transformative initiatives. In his 7 years at Sephora, Sree has played an instrumental role in building Sephora’s technology team to create scalable growth and continued innovation, to provide the best-in-class technology services and infrastructure to Sephora’s clients. Most recently, Sree and his team helped launch various ease & convenience initiatives like Same Day Delivery and Buy Online Pick Up In Store to elevate the client experience both in-store and online. Prior to joining Sephora, Sree held various roles at Walmart Labs and provided his consulting services to fortune 500 companies like Best Buy. His passion for innovation is evident in his 14+ patents received and numerous more pending. Sree currently resides in San Francisco, California with his family.

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"Understand who you are pitching to, what business they are in, what are their consumer trends, how can you add value to their organization or resolve problems they may be facing."

Elie Abenmoha serves as Chief IT Security Officer for Publicis Groupe, a global leader in advertising, media buying, data-driven marketing and digital business transformation where he leads the Global Security Office (GSO) protecting the organization against cyber threats, ensuring compliance to security regulations and managing a center of excellence supporting client and product delivery services.

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"The most secure computer is the computer that’s off."

Ali Parr is a technical-focussed business leader with 15+ years of experience in consumer facing product, partnerships and engineering roles for Facebook, Twitter, King (Activision Blizzard) and Unity. He leads an international team of 300, responsible for the core of Unity's engine and editor.

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"Simplicity is a feature! Often the simplest, but most convenient solution for an end user/customer is the one that ends up winning. Fight the desire to make your product more complex, as that often takes you away from the core value you are providing."