Category: Rising Star
Name: Itzik Kotler
Title: CTO and Co-Founder
Company: SafeBreach
Profile: Itzik Kotler has made a career out of training security people to think more like hackers. The SafeBreach platform, developed to continuously simulate hacker breach methods that quantify enterprise risks, has been the result of his work in offensive security.
Beyond his product-focused work at SafeBreach, Kotler has been deeply involved in research that seeks to advance IT security for the benefit of all through a deeper understanding of the ways hackers ply their trade. He believes that through this understanding all enterprises can do more to prepare for the inevitable attack.
On the publishing front, Kotler writes the semi-annual Hacker's Playbook and makes significant contributions to MITRE's ATT&CK Framework.
Kotler has also led research and given demonstrations at top security shows such as the RSA Conference, DEFCON and Black Hat on topics such as cyber war gaming, exfiltration techniques and weaponizing threat intelligence.
He has a heavyweight background for a career in security, starting his career with the Israel Defense Forces as a member of the elite Unit 8200. After finishing his service with the IDF, Kotler joined Radware as its security operations center team leader. He then left Radware in 2010 and joined Security Art as CTO.
Finally, after his stint at Security Art he went on to co-found SafeBreach with Guy Bejerano in September 2014. SafeBreach secured funding from Sequoia Capital, T Capital Partners, Hewlett-Packard Ventures, Maverick Ventures and angel investor Shlomo Kramer.
What colleagues say: "Breach and Attack Simulation is a game-changer for cybersecurity. Itzik's success with SafeBreach is a testament to industry that shows how deep leverage of the hacker mindset with automation can be a huge benefit to global enterprise cybersecurity. Congratulations to Itzik for his innovation, vision, and contributions to offensive security research. He is truly a rising star in cybersecurity."
- Craig Rosen, CISO AppDynamics (acquired by Cisco)
