Entro Security is a revolutionary cyber-holistic security platform that offers end-to-end protection for secrets and programmatic access to cloud services and data. Pulse 2.0 interviewed Entro co-founder and CEO Itzik Alvas.
Itzik Alvas’ Background
Alvas started his cybersecurity journey 17 years ago when he was selected to join the elite cyber security unit of the IDF (Israel Defense Forces). Alvas said:
“It was there that I was introduced to the cyber security ecosystem and gained enormous knowledge and experience on a nation-state level. After serving for five years, I moved to the ‘real world’ where I held various positions in the industry, including developer, DevOps, cybersecurity researcher, and CISO of a major healthcare organization, before becoming the Head of Security and SRE at Microsoft.Alvas
Formation Of Entro
How did the idea for Entro come together? Alvas shared:
“Each role that I’ve had has come with its challenges, and of course, there were many differences, but one thing never changed – the challenge of secrets security.”
“A few words about secrets: these are access credentials such as API keys and access tokens. They are the keys that applications use to authenticate against their cloud services. These keys are often scattered across different vaults, cloud services, and collaboration tools, making them highly vulnerable to attacks. As a cybersecurity professional, I was frustrated that there was no comprehensive solution to the secrets security problem. Together with Adam Cheriki, my good friend and colleague from my military service days, we decided to find a solution once and for all. Thus, Entro was born.”
Favorite Memory
What has been Alvas’ favorite memory working for Entro so far? Alvas reflected:
“There are many, understanding from hundreds of CISOs that this is a problem they face every day, getting my team back together to solve it, stopping the first live attack on a customer environment, and saving him millions of dollars as well as his reputation.”
“I suffered from the secrets issues for over 17 years. Every feature release cures a scar that I had from previous roles trying to secure my secrets without even knowing where they are or why they were created.”
“One thing I will never forget is the first feature we released that gave the security team answers to questions that were never answered before, such as how many secrets they have, where they are, who’s interacting with them, and what their risks are. This is the very first secret-related scar I healed.”
Challenges Faced
What are some of the challenges Alvas faced in building the company and has the current macroeconomic climate affected the company? Alvas acknowledged:
“I don’t think there is anyone who can say the macroeconomics has not affected them but honestly, what Entro offers is a solution to a problem that has been keeping security teams up at night… many, many nights. Entro provides a solution to a problem that has caused major losses and destruction to organizations. Secret-based attacks are among the top 3 attack vectors and the most devastating, with ripple effects that can go on for years, so we are not seeing anything slowing down. It’s the opposite.”
Core Products
What are Entro’s core products and features? Alvas explained:
“First and most important – Secrets protection designed specifically for security teams. We are the first and only holistic end-to-end secrets security solution. With Entro, Security teams are reclaiming control over their secrets.”
“Secrets are created mostly by the R&D teams… But they are not the ones responsible for securing them. It is important for me to point out, as it is for every organization out there that this is done without interfering in any way whatsoever with the R&D team’s work.”
Entro provides
— Comprehensive secrets discovery across all the organizations
— Enhanced lineage correlation and in-depth secret analysis and classification
— Real-time monitoring of any abnormal behavior, risk detection, and remediation and, in doing so, also saving development and security teams time and money
— Vault misconfiguration
— And a lot more
Evolution Of Entro’s Technology
How has Entro’s technology evolved since launching? Alvas noted:
“Since both Adam Cheriki, my co-founder, and myself had first-hand experience and frustration from dealing with the secrets security issue in our previous role, and since we both were responsible for securing secrets in past organizations, we had a great starting point. As a former CISO and a security professional, I knew what was missing for me and what I needed as a CISO to offer the organization the security it needed. Once we had the right solution in mind, we started showing this to CISOs and security experts. From the conversations with them, we learned that everyone suffers from the same issues: secrets are created and scattered all over by teams that are not responsible for securing them, and even if a security professional finds secrets, they have no information or understanding about how to secure it and keep it compliant. It is no wonder secret targeted attacks are one of the top three attack vectors today. No security team had a clue as to where their secrets were created, by whom, for what, where they were etc. And how important this was for them, so we presented our offered solution and learned from them that the Entro platform is a true game changer in the security of the secrets vertical and started to build our platform.”
Customer Success Story
Can you share any specific customer success stories? Alvas highlighted:
“We see success every day. That’s the beauty here. Every day we find secrets lurking in publicly exposed locations which makes them extremely vulnerable. Last week we stopped an attack where a bad actor stole a secret and used it to create more secrets and permissions. The experienced CISO had no idea. Until Entro, there was no way for him to know.”
Funding/Revenue
Are you able to discuss funding and how the company generates revenues? Alvas revealed:
“We are very proud and fortunate to be backed by some of top VC’s: Hyperwise and StageOne Ventures, as well as leading industry angle investors Rakesh Loonkar, founder of Trusteer, Transmit Security; Mickey Boodaei, founder of Imperva, Trusteer, Transmit Security; Amichai Shulman, founder of Imperva and Our business model is top bottom direct sales and working with partners and channels. We always keep in touch with our customers so we can understand their needs and give them even higher value while keeping their secrets compliant and secure.”
Total Addressable Market
What total addressable market (TAM) size is Entro pursuing? Alvas assessed:
“Entro’s total addressable market is $16.3 billion.”
Differentiation From The Competition
What differentiates Entro from its competition? Alvas noted:
“Entro is the first and only end-to-end holistic secrets security and management solution.”
“There are a number of solution buckets that try to offer partial answers. However, each tackle only a small fraction of what is needed. None of the existing solutions provide an end-to-end solution that continuously monitors and protects secrets and programmatic access to cloud services and data.”
“Here are a couple of examples: 1.) Vaults: Databases in which secrets can be stored by the R&D teams. These solutions do not provide any context per stored secret. There is no secret risk severity, no usage insight. Furthermore, a user can’t understand if the secret is enabled, who is using it, what cloud service it can access and with what permission. In addition, they do not integrate with other vaults. Keep in mind there are a minimum of five vaults per organization (e.g., AWS secrets manager, Kubernetes secrets, GitHub Action Secrets…) 2.) Secret scanners: Scan secrets, actively searching for leaked and exposed secrets. Again – no context, exposed coverage, no integration with other solutions such as vaults, no usage insight, no red flags of abnormal behavior or any correlated risk per secret.”
Future Company Goals
What are some of Entro’s future company goals?
“Our main goal is what we set out to do initially: Once and for all, provide a solution for one of the industry’s biggest security problems that is growing exponentially – Reclaiming control over secrets for security teams and securing each secret key and programmatic access.”
“In the short term, we are focusing on adding the needed security oversight over secrets by providing a secrets inventory, classifying and enriching each secret with vital data and continuously monitoring all secrets for any misuse, abuse, abnormal behavior, or threat.”
“I am saying with confidence that we are on the right track.”
