How the meeting of minds formed MIND
Hello world!
I’ve always had an entrepreneurial spirit. Even from an early age, I knew I wanted to build something of my own. My career began in the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) Intelligence Unit, where I oversaw critical technological defense operations. Later, I co-founded Hexadite, the pioneering startup to tackle Automated Incident Response that became known as Security Orchestration, Automation, and Response (SOAR).
At Hexadite, we created a fully automated solution that enabled organizations to automatically investigate and remediate cyber-alerts. By revealing hidden threats and helping them remediate breaches through automation, we played a crucial role in helping companies be more secure. Looking back, where our platform added the most value was from data loss prevention (DLP) alerts. I’d say more than half of the alerts the platform investigated came from DLP tools, and a majority of those were false positives.
Building a startup from the ground up is no small feat, and having worked tirelessly to build and scale Hexadite, it was exciting yet bittersweet when the company was acquired by Microsoft in 2017. As CEO, I was responsible for choosing the right partner and negotiating the acquisition. What helped me was having deep knowledge of the industry, along with a natural instinct for knowing when timing is right.
After the sale of Hexadite, I founded and led the Microsoft Intelligent Security Association (MISA) program, working closely with hundreds of security vendors, including the Microsoft Information Protection (MIP) team. I saw firsthand the challenges of data security solutions, and in particular DLP tools. Since leaving Microsoft I’ve continued to invest in cybersecurity startups with a focus on data security, which I always found extremely interesting. So when I was thinking about what to build next, I knew it would be in this space.
Mind meld
However, the full picture of MIND wasn’t clear until I met my co-founders Itai and Hod. Together, we spoke with more than a hundred CISOs, and it was obvious that innovation was needed in DLP. Even to this day, false positives continue to plague conventional tools, which leads to a host of major problems for companies. They’re a drain on budgets and resources, and are becoming increasingly ineffective with today’s explosion and sprawl of data.
Plus, people are now putting sensitive data into Gen AI tools, which is a cause for concern when it comes to data security. But innovation in AI has also been good for us at MIND. The maturity of AI has enabled our technology to achieve its potential, specifically with our proprietary MIND AI engine that autonomously monitors billions of data events 24x7 in real-time, classifies and categorizes sensitive data with precision to dramatically reduce false positives and noisy alerts, and remediates issues and risks with insightful action.
Time is now to scale
This moment coming out of stealth is definitely sweet after 18 months of hard work developing our product, delivering value to early customers and building our go-to-market engine. Now, we're completely ready for scale. At the beginning, building the early team was so important. Today, we have the right people and the go-to market plan. Plus we’re constantly developing the team so they can continue to build and scale.
I believe that everything happens for a reason, and everything that happens is meant to be. I’ve seen this play out many times, both in business and life. There will always be setbacks, but we need to understand these as opportunities—stepping stones to something greater. Throughout my career, this belief has been my fuel. Everyone who wants to make an impact in this world will need to do hard things. The path will never be easy, but how we walk it makes a huge difference. And today we are ready to run and help our customers truly mind what matters.
