Founding Year: 2014
Office Locations: IRONSCALES is headquartered in Atlanta, GA, and was founded in Tel Aviv. In addition to these two office locations, IRONSCALES supports a global remote workforce.
Website: www.ironscales.com
Leaders in Next Generation Email Security
IRONSCALES started as an email phishing simulation and training company. They realized that there was a disconnect in how people were using these tools. The learning process didn’t provide enough help or guidance for users on what actions are best when it comes to making educated decisions about their inboxes. Guided by this insight, the IRONSCALE’s team set out with one mission: To create a product that fights phishing by leveraging the power of technology and humans.
IRONSCALES pioneered an AI-driven virtual security analyst, named Themis, named after Greek Mythology’s woman of good counsel. Themis is the first and only of her kind. She takes on the burden of analyzing and acting on detected threats in email, freeing up organizations to work on other security initiatives and focus on their work. Themis does the heavy lifting for already-busy security teams. Today, IRONSCALES offers a comprehensive email security solution and security and awareness training in a complete anti-phishing solution.
Q & A with IRONSCALES’ CEO, Eyal Benishti:
Tell us about your challenges and how you managed to overcome them.
The biggest challenge innovative companies are facing is that we are usually offering a completely different approach to solving an existing problem.
As a small, mostly unknown brand, pitching novel ideas was not easy. We didn’t have the credentials necessary, and we were trying hard to educate the market about things that were accepted as status quo. For instance, we were pushing the message that people are not the cybersecurity problem, but rather a part of the solution. This concept was hard to process back then, but now it has become mainstream and commonly accepted.
We started small and even bootstrapped the business in its first couple of years. Couple this with the lack of resources we had at the time, and a lack of understanding in the market of what we were trying to achieve. This posed a great challenge for IRONSCALES. The way around it is to not give up, work hard and build the case for what you believe in day after day. Take baby steps toward the goal of turning your idea into a reality.
On what ideals are your work culture and business ethics based?
IRONSCALES fosters a supportive culture, where employees are eager and ambitious, where we strive for excellence, and the team is focused but resourceful. IRONSCALES is solving a complex and everchanging challenge, cyberattacks, so we encourage our team to continue learning and seeking solutions, never settling for what worked in the past. We operate in a fast-paced, multi-cultural organization and are grounded in respect for one another, and the customers and partners we serve.
How do you define success? Do you think there is some sort of a formula to become successful?
Success is a different thing for different people in different contexts. In our case, success was changing the mindset of security professionals in the sense of how they perceive their human capital regarding cybersecurity. We were trying to shift thinking from people being a liability, to people being an asset in combatting cybercrime. Once we had managed to convince enough companies to leverage their employees and treat them as yet another layer in their organization’s security, then we realized that we were starting to experience success. Companies were starting to proactively look for solutions that were putting people in the center of their cyber defense strategy.
The only formula for success that I know is to never give up. It is not about the idea; it is about persistence and living every day believing that people will eventually realize what you are working on. Obsess over understanding your customers and effectively show them how your product or service can benefit them, their people, and their organizations.
What would you say are the factors that have contributed to your success as an organization?
Our first success factor was timing. We had started working on the spear-phishing problem when it was still a nuance, something that was concerning large enterprises who could afford this kind of solution. We realized early on that this problem was about to turn into an epidemic; it was inevitable as the bar for threat actors was too low. We knew we could offer a solution that would help organizations of all sizes.
The second factor is our team. I am fortunate enough to surround myself with super smart people dedicated to innovating and solving this emerging problem with great technology.
The third factor was the Israeli ecosystem, which is a great starting ground for cyber security companies and entrepreneurs. There are many early adopters and C-level executives who are eager to help young companies find their product-market fit. They possess great knowledge and lots of patience for products early in their growth lifecycle.
What do you think is the most unique aspect of your business?
We are very proud of building a solution for people, by the people, and making cyber defense something companies can collaborate on. We’ve built an exponential solution that is powered by our community and strengthened by our AI. We took this democratized approach to security because we believe in the security teams that are using our solution and their verdicts. Their critical input allows for real-time detection and remediation of sophisticated cyber-attacks which help the larger IRONSCALES community.
Where do you see your company a few years from now?
I see us going public as the leader of integrated communication & email security.
How has your journey been so far?
As you can imagine, it was all across the emotional spectrum. It’s been mostly fun, fulfilling, and rewarding. I feel lucky.
Knowing the Founder
Eyal Benishti, CEO and Founder
Eyal brings nearly 15 years of software industry experience with enterprise and startup companies to his executive leadership role. Before establishing IRONSCALES, he served as Security Researcher & Malware Analyst at Radware, where he filed two patents in the information security domain.
Under Eyal’s leadership, IRONSCALES has received numerous awards, including Inc 5000’s Fastest-Growing Private Companies 2021, Frost & Sullivan’s AI-Powered Email Security Innovation Award, and Best Enterprise Email Security Solution by the Cybersecurity Breakthrough Awards. Additionally, IRONSCALES has filed four patents for anti-phishing and email security solutions and secured three funding rounds from K1 and Israel’s RDSeed totaling more than $20 million.
“IRONSCALES offers a solution that is fast to deploy, easy to operate, and is unparalleled in the ability to stop all types of email threats, including advanced attacks like BEC, ATO, and more.”
