“Beyond the lines of code…true friendships grow here”

In our new open-source section, we’ll chat with CTOs and VPs of R&D, who’ll tell us a bit about themselves and the path they took to get to their job, share professional tips, and answer to professional and silly questions. . And this week, our guest is Galit Lubetzky Sharon, CTO of Israeli startup Wing Security, who talks about how far she’s come, shares tips for young entrepreneurs, and talks about what she does in her spare time. So let’s get started.

Hi Galit. First of all, we would like to know about your life and the career path you followed until Wing Security.

“I came to the scene at Wing after a 20-year military career in the IDF, from which I retired with the rank of Colonel. I joined Unit 8200 when it was still a SIGINT-based intelligence gathering unit. My team was among the first to generate breakthroughs in the field currently known as cybersecurity. At the time, we were thinking of designing new features using initiatives and taking advantage of the inherent potential of the Internet. I was fortunate to be in this unit just as we were developing new technologies, launching operations, and developing operational concepts that enabled targeted intelligence gathering.

For 20 years, I have helped create technological breakthroughs and monumental cybersecurity operations that have truly exceeded our imaginations. Beyond the fact that it was an incredible privilege to be part of these efforts, I learned that the sky is the limit, and there is no limit to what you can achieve and build if you bring the right people together and define the right problem. I learned to listen and understand what was needed, and to verify that the solution we were developing met all our requirements. My experiences in building and managing many and various cyber businesses during my time in the IDF paved the way for me to start my own business after I retired from the military.

Tell us a bit about the product you are developing at Wing Security and the technology behind it.

“SaaS applications took over our working environments a long time ago, and rightly so. They help streamline and facilitate work for a large number of positions in organizations, from human resources and marketing to development and administration. Everyone – and I mean everyone – uses SaaS. It’s a growing network of apps that serve as access points to an organization’s data, and it’s no surprise that hackers have noticed this too. Wing Security is the only company to develop a platform that ensures that these applications will be used safely in a way that does not endanger the organization but also does not prevent it from using SaaS applications and to take advantage of all the advantages they offer.

We provide a complete solution, starting with the discovery phase of all SaaS applications that an organization and its employees use, followed by the identification and analysis of security vulnerabilities, and ending with their automatic remediation. Our system locates and fixes all major SaaS-related security issues, including unsafe connections between apps (app2app), external file sharing, detection of new apps, unique permissions granted by users, and exposure inconsistencies in user actions. The system clearly displays which apps are compatible and which apps have high or low security and allows users to customize their security settings.

Security managers can choose to involve end users throughout the process and allow them to be part of the solution. At the same time, security managers retain full control over what to focus on and when to take action, including the ability to use full automation. That’s why we get up in the morning to identify the key issues that put our clients’ most sensitive assets at risk and to close those gaps. As you can see, our goal is quite ambitious, but we believe that a holistic solution, like the one we have developed, will be the best solution to the many challenges we have identified for working securely in a SaaS environment.

Tell me about Wing Security’s development culture and way of working.

“When Noam and I were starting the company and imagining what it would look like, it was extremely important to us that it be fun! We wanted to create our dream company, in the sense that it would be technologically challenging and interesting, and no less important, that our office is a fun place to come to every morning for coffee with friends. We wanted to build an amazing, cohesive team that would work together to achieve every goal and complete every task in the best way possible. Striving for excellence, taking responsibility, maintaining honesty, showing mutual respect, always keeping both feet on the ground and truly loving what we do, these are the most important values ​​for us.

I’m thrilled and proud that Wing turned out the way it did. We are a group of super talented and professional people, and most importantly, everyone is wonderful. Beyond the many lines of code that form the basis of our innovative and practical security solution, we create real friendships. It’s wonderful and exciting. At Wing, we are extremely customer-oriented, as evidenced by our organizational structure. We are built in such a way that we can close shorts and provide good solutions to our customers in a timely manner. We work in relatively short development cycles – we find that three-week cycles are the most efficient and convenient for us and give us the right balance between task scheduling and overhead in the analysis of the previous cycle and planning for the next cycle.

We’re really transparent – we have sync meetings a few times a week, and every employee has a place to voice their opinion, share updates on their progress on specific tasks, and check in with other members of the group. We are a very open company. It’s important to us that everyone is up to date on each client’s status, what went well and what parts didn’t go so well so that we can pivot quickly when the need arises. We do all this to make sure that each of our customers is satisfied.

What interesting and significant breakthroughs or developments have you led that you are proud of?

“We have developed cutting-edge technology that allows us to discover and analyze SaaS applications in a way that is non-intrusive and does not influence or harm the quality of work performed by application users. SaaS. It is a unique technology that, without invading the privacy of the end user, manages to slowly allow us to collect huge amounts of data. I am extremely proud that Wing has successfully taken up the challenge of analyzing and processing the huge amounts of data that build the complex world of SaaS applications. Our ability to extract and analyze data, and above all to draw relevant conclusions that will effectively protect our customers, is extremely important and interesting to me!

What advice can you offer young developers and engineers starting out in their careers?

“Your foundation must be deep and stable – only then can you begin to build a tower. Be sure to invest a lot of time and effort in learning proper development and accumulating more and more hours of experience in systems planning, development and integration. This is the right way to build the right muscles. It is important to progress into leadership roles once you have accumulated enough hands-on experience I am a strong believer in management based on deep technological understanding.

Is there a product you’ve created or code you’ve written – something unrelated to work – that you’ve created for the good of society? Do you have hobbies?

“It’s funny you ask that question because I haven’t had a minute to spare for many years now – my job is intense and I have four children at home – but recently I was sitting with my son , which at lightning speed converted photographs stored on my iPhone from Apple’s compressed format to normal format so they could be printed using e-book editing software. so that all of our memories from our travels can be captured and added to our collection of travel books.

Aliens have invaded planet Earth and destroyed the entire Stack Overflow database. What’s the first thing you do?

“Restore everything from our backup, of course…”

What is your favorite podcast or book that you would like to recommend?

“I read a lot. I love historical novels, especially Ken Follett’s. I recently read In the evening and in the morning, which I highly recommend. I love listening to podcasts while I jog, like Making History with Ran Levi, which covers technology, medicine and politics; a16z; Startup for Startup; and The Next Billion – GGV Capital.

What songs do you like to listen to while coding or working?

“Classical or jazz.

What are your favorite gadgets?

“My Apple Watch – it’s a must!”

What is the first thing you will do after exiting your business?

“I’ll drink a glass of champagne to celebrate, then I’ll move on to the next challenge.”

And one last question: tab or space bar?

“Tabs, of course!”