Cybersecurity Strategy and Performance – Sivan Tehila, Onyxia

This is Textron TV. Hey everyone, welcome back to techstruck TV, you know got a lot of new companies coming out here right before the end of the year. I've got another fairly new company.

I want to talk to you introduce you to as well as their founder CEO here. I'd like to introduce you to see Vaughn tequila. If I got it, hopefully I got it right Sivan.

Welcome to text drug TV. How are you? Great.

Thank you so much for having me. That's our pleasure. So the name of your company is a Nexia and we're going to jump into how you got to the name and wanted next year does in a minute but let's start off with a little bit of your background.

Tell us a little bit about about you. Of course, so I'm originally from Israel. That's where I was born and raised and like many other Israelis.

I started my career in the Israeli Defense Forces. I served for 10 years in the Army as a cybersecurity officer. And in my last roles, I was the sister the Chief Information Security Officer for the research and Analysis division in the intelligence Corps, and then the head of the information security unit in the intelligence score later.

I worked for other critical infrastructures and defense Industries in Israel. And after I while I was doing that I decided to shift a little bit and try and join the Startup world and that's how I got to join perimeter 81. We share you probably know such a great company great people and I was there for two and a half years and in the same time, I developed multiple courses for the Academia and I'm and I became the program director for the cyber security master's degree a teacher University, which is one of the New York, New York.

Yeah. Great. Yeah.

No, I have friends who are professors there. Not not at the cyber security. Well, we're always looking for professors and our program was ranked second by Fortune Magazine and second donation after Berkeley University and shiver University is one of the top 100 universities and then in the United States, so I'm very proud of the program and I feel that it's another Mission of mine to educate the next generation of Security Experts and about a year ago.

I had and after a while working in the industry obviously and from the city society and from the vendor side. I realized that there is a significant need in a more strategic solution in the cyber security space. The name of the company is an except and the next year was my favorite virtual character in World of Warcraft if anyone and no that yeah, so they don't know.

Yeah. So what I what I liked about an xia was that she had a human form and a dragon form and she could basically basically adjust based on evolving environment. and the pain we're solving is really the fact that what we see today, is that companies and mainly Security leaders are busy with responding to incident being more and reactive than proactive because they have such an overwhelming environment more than 50 security solution to manage in every age in each company they have there is a shortage in security people.

So they usually need to handle those Solutions and incidents with really short and Team and what we see also is that most of the time companies bring one once a year a consultant to make their environments to come up with a strategy to give them suggestions, but those recommendations are not longer relevant after a month because everything is changing so fast. and with an Excel we're basically providing an ongoing updated strategy a platform where Security leaders can and make decisions faster and understand very quickly how to priorityize their security efforts when it comes to people processes and Technologies and by that we're not we're giving them strategic platform that helps them manage the Tactical day-to-day challenges So that's how I got to build an exia. I saw this pain instead, so I realized that the reason it here and it's been a super exciting year for us.

And I'm happy to share more. Absolutely. Well, but you know, I wanted you to tell the story a little before I jumped in so you guys recently announced around the funding.

Tell us a little if you don't mind if you can't you tell us a little about it. Yeah, so sure I and we we closed a ground of more than five million dollars led by World Trade Ventures and with them additional and Angel Investors and strategic Partners. The founders of Sam Paris also joined there around and I'm sure people so familiar with them with this great company and it's obviously where it's it's a weird time for the whole startup ecosystem to to raise money and to and So so the best obviously yeah, so the process obviously and I mean it's never easy.

Yes, but if you can prove a need and you can prove that there is a market and you can show interest of design partners and potential customers and we we've done all that. I think that eventually that's eventually what works and what matters and we're always working with Our customers and design Partners to make sure that we're making the right adjustments and to make sure that we're growing with the market and not building something that is really disconnected from their day-to-day needs. So I get it look macroeconomics, but let me give you the flip side.

I've been at this for a long time. And meaning raising money start up Venture back startups and so forth. When when economies are down?

Is when the next great companies are born. Right, that's generally speaking. Right?

Yeah. So this is a great time to start a company. It's a great time to get funded.

I know it's not easy, but you did it and you know once you do it once it's much easier the next time so good luck and congratulations on that. Let's talk a little bit about You know the state of cyber right as I told you off camera. I've been involved in the security world for 25 years.

I've seen Good Times bad times and always says the same. I so I'm a glass half full kind of person. I really think.

In spite of everything when you read in here that today we are better at cyber security than we were five years ago or 10 years ago or 20 years ago, right? now that being said the bad guys are better too the mission Still Remains hard, there's much work to do and and still the biggest thing is probably you know, we talk about a skills Gap in all of this, but we just Very few organizations are actually capable of doing cybersecurity. Well, I think that Still Remains the biggest.

hurdle for us to get over is that you know, we can give you all the tools in the world. If you don't have the team to get it done, you just don't have the team to get it done. What do you think?

I totally agree with that and they think that you know, it's not only about having the team. I think it's again going back to strategy when you have a strategy that is constantly updated with all those evolving changes. It's much easier for you as a decision maker.

It's a security leader to act fester and to be able to adjust your company and and basically handle those and evolving and challenges and the way The way I look at it. Like if I'm looking back at my days as a sister. I was always thinking to myself.

You always need to prioritize right you can't do everything and you need to focus and in order to focus. It's you really need to have a strategy that helps you takes all those noises from your sim solution your MDR solution. Oh then things you're getting in the news.

Hey, there is this campaign. Now what like there was the there are all those sisters group where they getting all those updates. and I always thought that it would it could be.

Awesome to have a place where I can wake up in the morning have my coffee catch up from my mobile phone on what's going on in my environment and get prioritized the actionable insights in the same way. I'm asking Alexa in the morning. Hey Alexa.

How's the weather today? I can wake up and ask connection. Good morning.

What are the top three things? I should focus on today. What are the top three things?

I should do today to get my company a better security posture score in maximize the capabilities of my team in the capacity of my team and my security staff. Um, and I think that even though things are becoming more and more challenges and Technologies are becoming more sophisticated and both sides and having this strategy and the ability to focus and prioritize is key and it will be able to do that. It will still make securely leaders and companies with mature and security plan programming place and ahead of Of those, you know the goats.

Yeah, absolutely. So how is the service product offered to security leases like a subscription model or how does one engage there? So yes, it's a subscription model.

We actually just released a pretty cool free app on you can find it in Apple Store Google store. We have our web app, but we realize that at the end of the day many many Security leaders are not even accessing their and web dashboards because they don't have time. There are just so many of them.

So we decided to make everything accessible on mobile. So we develop those mobile apps. So basically the app offer a very more than 60 verified security news and security intelligence reports in one place.

And that's how you can wake up in the morning and catch up on all what's going on in your in the security world, but in the and the other stage of the app is basically the ability to integrate with your Existing security stack and get those insights in a very priority rise and correlated way also through your app. So it's a third subscription model. We have the premium version that anyone can use and we have more advanced subscription for and mid market and companies and and Enterprise level.

So let me ask a question. So the the industry news is it sort of threat intelligence threat reports or is it more? General kind of just what's going on in Security today.

So it's a threat intelligence. There were is from sista updates from us search. You can see the East score on some specific articles and we offer that for free and it's going to stay for free.

I really believe that it's something that we need to do as a service for the community because we realize that there is a need and we don't want people to get updated on look for Jay through a WhatsApp group or from through Linkedin and basically any security leader can play authorize his Performance Based on his environment and get push notification when something happens to his phone and it's it's a pretty cool product. Right? Basically during the weekend.

We're already had a Cisco told us. I was the first one to share with the WhatsApp group that something happened because I got it on my mobile and for you good for him, too. That's great.

I love it. So there's a freemium a free version of this as well as some premium add-ons. right Great stuff.

Hey, you know what? We didn't do so fun. Spell the name of the company in the website.

An exam yeah. I'm sorry. Oh, okay.

Oh and why x i a and it's our Nick our next year calm. io important IO. Okay.

Yeah, I just want to make sure people get it and they could go download the free app right now and start using it. Hey, this is a great story. You know what I love the fact that you're involved in helping train the Next Generation and what you're doing it at Yeshiva University.

But I love what you're doing in the next year. I wish you nothing but success. I don't know if you're planning on going out to the RSA conference that's in April, but we'll be there doing videos live.

Please stop by. We'll do a live video there and love to catch up with you. I would love that and I I'll be there.

Alrighty. All right. io.

Go. Check it out. Savantahela CEO founder here on texture on TV.

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