Getting complete network coverage is becoming a real challenge in today’s networks. Cynamics is reinventing network detection and response thanks to its appliance-less and agent-less AI-based approach that is able to infer from less than 1% of network samples on the 100%.
Dr. Aviv Yehezkel, Cynamics Co-Founder and CTO – Enthusiastic about math and computer science from childhood, Aviv began his academic path towards a BSc in applied mathematics during high school (summa cum laude) at the age of 15. After 5 years of IDF service as a Senior Research Captain in Naval Intelligence and unit 8200, Aviv earned his Computer Science PhD from the Technion at the age of 24 as the youngest faculty ever. Aviv’s PhD thesis was about novel computer networks and cybersecurity big data problems and applications.
After spending a year with NICE systems as senior researcher, he joined Eyal to co-found Cynamics as the company CTO, leading innovation, technology and R&D.
Questions:
1. How did you first get interested in cybersecurity?
I first became interested in cybersecurity during my army service in Israel, as part of the Naval Intelligence and Unit 8200. Additionally, I received my PhD in computer science in the Technion, where I developed state-of-the-art algorithms for different cybersecurity problems.
2. How did you come up with this solution that your cybersecurity company provides?
My partner, Eyal Elyashiv, and I realized that the network detection and response (NDR) market is stagnant and in need of a new paradigm. The legacy approach of analyzing 100% network traffic, 100% of the time is no longer sufficient as networks continue to grow in volume and complexity. We realized the only reasonable solution would require a sampling-based approach, that uses a small fraction of the network traffic, to learn and infer 100% full network visibility. Delivering complete coverage at speed and scale.
3. How did you come up with the name of your cybersecurity company?
The name Cynamics is a combination of ‘Cyber’ and ‘Dynamics’, a tribute to our innovative approach which is a complete departure from legacy deep-packet-inspection, which is no longer suitable to analyze 100% of the network pattern traffic, 100% of the time.
4. Is there anything currently in the market which addresses the solution you provide?
Cynamics is the only solution on the market today that uses sample-based approaches. Like blood sampling, Cynamics takes radically small traffic samples, less than 1% and learns everything there is to know about the entire network, inferring from the 1% to the 100% is known as a complex challenge amongst academia and industry professionals. With Cynamics, we’re solving this challenge for the first time using our unique patented and academically-acknowledged AI-based technology.
5. How do you differentiate your company from your competition?
In addition to our unique sample-based approach and patented AI technology as previously mentioned, Cynamics is 100% SaaS based, we are a low-touch solution, we do not expand clients’ attack surface because we do not require any appliances, agents, sensors or probes. We are 100% risk-free, because we do not save or collect any payload or sensitive data there is no associated risk with compliance rules or regulations. Additionally, our entire onboarding is done in under an hour, a majority of our customers onboard themselves and start gaining value from our solution in hours.
6. How did you decide who your core team will be?
Our core team is comprised of highly-professionally, deeply technical, cybersecurity experts. We are a young company with a goal of making a big impact on a stagnant industry. Cynamics employees are team players with great passion and motivation to innovate on a daily basis, solving complex problems and disrupting the NDR market.
7. There is a lack of cybersecurity awareness, especially during an employee’s onboarding/offboarding process. Should cybersecurity training be made compulsory?
With Cynamics, our solution requires minimal resources and staff training. We have a built in Virtual Cyber Analyst (VCA), which is constantly looking and analyzing the user’s network security and will alert on communications with suspicious asset’s behavior and much more.
8. Where do you think your company will be in 5 years’ time?
A leader in the network detection and response (NDR) market.
9. What do you think are the top cybersecurity threats today?
More and more organizations are being compromised on a daily basis as networks become increasingly interconnected and more complex with major blind spots. The East-West part of the network, which is the internal servers-to-servers traffic, is not being prioritized, ultimately causing minimal coverage, and increased risk. At Cynamics, we constantly see sophisticated attackers infiltrating, unnoticed, moving around on the network undiscovered, learning the target network, stealing sensitive data, preparing attack tools in different areas of the network, etc. Attackers are smarter today than ever before, in order to ward them off, organizations need complete network visibility in order to predict threats before they occur.
10. What do you think will be the greatest technological advancements in the coming years that will affect the cybersecurity industry?
In the coming years, as technology gets smarter, so too will the bad actors who try to infiltrate networks. Both the attacking and defending sides will increase their use of AI and ML. Additionally, organizations will move towards hybrid environments, combining legacy, private clouds and public clouds which all need to be consolidated under a single pane of glass coverage in order to have full network visibility.
11. What is the one thing companies can do to improve their cybersecurity risk?
In order to improve cybersecurity risk, organizations must prioritize network security, gaining complete 100% accurate network coverage. Without full visibility, threats can easily go unnoticed, backdoors and blind spots will exist, and organizations are at a greater risk. Having an aerial view of the network provides much more clarity into what is going on, where the weaknesses lie, what suspicious behaviors and patterns need to be investigated and so on.
12. What is the one tip you could give an individual to minimize their cybersecurity risk?
Less relevant… we’re B2B/G.
13. Do you think the cybersecurity industry is going through a wave, bubble, or natural growth?
As technology evolves and greater interconnectivity becomes the new normal, we’ll continue to see growth in the cybersecurity industry. Cybercriminals are becoming smarter, and more opportunistic, they will continue to infiltrate organizations, and businesses for ransom, the more they win, the more they’ll try. As cyberattacks have become more frequent, and sophisticated, governments and businesses of all industries are inherently more aware of the risk they face and are trying to get ahead of the potential downfall of an attack.
14. Other than work, how do you spend your time outside the cybersecurity realm?
In my little spare time, I enjoy playing basketball and reading history books, mainly on WW2 events.
Dr. Yehezkel is on a mission to bring Cynamics innovation to the world, a keynote speaker and lecturer who inspires future AI and cybersecurity professionals. For more information visit www.Cynamics.ai
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/cynamics/mycompany/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/Cynamics_ai
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Cynamics-106934851839258
