Security Feature

Cynet co-founder and CEO, Eyal Gruner

“Boy security wonder” aims to reinvent the cyber security landscape with a security platform that dramatically simplifies cyber defense

At the age of 15, Eyal Gruner first stepped into a bank with his parents. He was excited about opening his first bank account. At the entrance, he saw a touch screen for visitors to take a line number and began clicking the screen to try and hack it. Within minutes, he had access to the bank’s internal systems. “They called me to the manager’s office. I told him that their security was lax and showed him how I could get inside,” Gruner remembers. “They eventually hired me as a pen tester.”

After providing consulting to the government, military and intelligence units, at age 21, Gruner founded Versafe, a provider of web anti-fraud, anti-phishing, and anti-malware solutions. In 2013, when Gruner was only 25, Versafe was sold to F5 Networks for a reported $110-million, prompting Gartner (News - Alert) VP analyst Avivah Litan to refer to Gruner as “boy security wonder.”

While working with enterprise organizations on enhancing cyber defense, Gruner realized that the “best of breed” approach wasn’t working for them. Even though these organizations deployed, integrated and maintained multiple security solutions, breaches continued as did the workload on defenders.  Technically, point solutions didn’t “talk to each other” so security teams never got a complete picture of what was going on inside their network. “Furthermore, I realized that organizations that don’t have the resources or expertise to deploy, integrate and manage multiple cyber security solutions are forced to accept a high level of risk,” said Gruner.

Founding Cynet

So in 2015, Gruner founded Cynet, what he calls a “true security platform”, purposely built for organizations that need the ability to identify, block and respond to all types of attacks in their environment- defending machines, users and network, without the heavy burden of deep cyber expertise and the overhead of integrating and managing multiple products. “But all this had to be as simple as an iPhone (News - Alert),” explained Gruner.  “Today, most companies don’t have the time or expertise for effective cyber defense.  The landscape is so complex and not getting any easier.”

How do you make cyber security as easy as an iPhone?  Just like an iPhone, Cynet looks simple on the outside.  But open it up and there’s a lot to see.  To achieve a goal of simplicity, Gruner and his engineering team had to achieve three things.

“First, we had to converge and integrate all the essential security technologies needed to protect an organization’s internal network,” Gruner explained.  The essential components include endpoint protection (Including an AV), Endpoint detection and response, vulnerability management, deception, threat intelligence, network analytics and user behavior analytics (UEBA). “This multi-layer approach ensures that any type of threat can be detected and stopped,” Gruner said.  “It also creates unrivalled visibility that you can’t get even if you deploy multiple point solutions and integrate them.”

The second challenge:  help companies with the cyber security skills gap.  To compensate for the all-too-well-known lack of expertise in cyber security, Cynet fills the void on its own.  Cynet has its own operations team which is included with the product subscription. “Available 24/7, Cynet’s operations team constantly engage in incident response, malware analysis, threat hunting and forensics, so our customers know we have their back 24/7, with immediate expertise of frontline analysts at any needed moment and is ideal for customers wanting to further bolster existing resources or add a level of security they do not have at all” adds Gruner.

CyOps, Cynet’s 24/7 “Cyber SWAT Team”

The final challenge? Make deployment and maintenance easy and transparent. According to one customer, Cynet has made this happen.  “Cynet deploys in hours and simplifies management with automated monitoring. In an industry where cyber security products typically require days to weeks to implement - this is a huge advantage,” explained one customer.

The Cynet Bet is Paying Off

Today, Cynet is clearly moving in a direction of interest to many with $20-million in financing from investors coming on-board who are major industry players. One of them is Shlomo Kramer, a leading entrepreneur and investor in cyber security companies known for his golden touch in selecting the companies which go on to become successful. He founded giants such as Checkpoint and Imperva, and invested in many successful cyber security companies including Trusteer (acquired in September 2013 by IBM (News - Alert) for $1 billion), LightCyber (acquired by Palo Alto Networks) and many more. “Cynet will be a game-changer in the cyber security space. A single platform that provides complete protection inside the perimeter for any size organization is revolutionary,” explained Kramer. “Cynet’s strong value lies in the fact that one person can easily and effectively manage the solution, even across tens of thousands of hosts. It’s easy to deploy and simple to use, while providing 360-degree visibility and protection. I wouldn’t be surprised if they will become the “go-to” solution for companies looking to defend their internal networks.”

Cynet’s customers range from organizations with 500 employees to those with over 100,000 employees. A CISO of a large global bank that uses Cynet explained, “We chose Cynet because even in the proof of concept, we suddenly saw how much we had been missing. We were receiving alerts on threats that we had not known were there and we were able to instantly remediate them. And we got all this without increasing our investment in time, manpower or other resources – it was a clear win-win.” 

Originally focused on organizations that have between several hundreds to a few thousands endpoints, it quickly became clear to Gruner that even with all their access to resources, enterprises with tens of thousands of employees were as interested in the consolidated approach as the smaller organizations. “In speaking to customers and prospects, we saw that consolidation, and everything that came along with it – from saving time, money and manpower, to achieving a higher level of visibility and response – was a significant plus, even for large organizations.” 

As solutions across the market continue to evolve, Gruner pushes the engineering team at Cynet to stay ahead. Ironically, a lot of complexity goes into making things simple. Said Gruner, “In an industry where customers are looking for speed, ease-of-use, and accuracy – all guiding principles for us – Cynet provides this and more, in a solution designed to be a comprehensive answer to the needs of the internal network – with everything a security team needs in one place.”