Amir Ofek is the CEO of Alcide (www.alcide.io). Amir has over 20 years of experience in the hi-tech industry. Prior to Alcide, Amir was President and CEO at CyberInt, where he led the company’s fast growth in the cybersecurity MDR space. Before, he worked at Amdocs (NASDAQ:DOX), where he served as VP Client Business Executive for the SingTel Group, based in Singapore, and as the Chief of Staff of Amdocs CEO. He was also a board director at Gilat Satellite Networks (NASDAQ:GILT).
1. What is Alcide?
Alcide is one of the Latin names for Hercules- the protector of the clouds.And this is exactly what Alcide the company is – protecting end to end Kubernetes with our Alcide Kubernetes Security SaaS Platform.
2. Why did you join Alcide?
I joined Alcide as I have seen the revolution Kubernetes is creating. Now in hindsight I must say I underestimated the ememse impact of Kubernetes on cloud deployments globally and the amazing ecosystem it has created around it. I am proud to be part of this Kubernetes community. The other reason was the great gap I have seen through my cyber security career in the DevSecOps space and the need to bridging between DevOps mindset and Security mindset.
3. How did you get to where you are today with your company?
Alcide started as a cloud security company coming with a robust Network Security approach. It is backed by Intel Capital and Elron. Just about 1.5 years ago as Kubernetes started to pick up, Alcide decided to shift and focus only on Kubernetes Security and started to form its Kubernetes Security Platform specific capabilities. Today the company serves and partners with many companies worldwide which decided to focus on Kubernetes including: Takeaway/JustEat/Grubhub, Snowflake, Datadog, Rancher, Sumologic and more.
4. What is the startup scene in Israel and how has that helped your company?
Israel has an amazing startup vibrant scene. First and foremost it allows tapping into a brilliant (almost endless) pull of innovation driven experts, especially in the cyber domain. Having served myself for 5 years at the 8200 unit as a Captain, I can fully appreciate the great young talents the unit graduates every year.Secondly the great relationships and partnerships build between startups in Israel also increase our proposition and global exposure, a few such partners in Alcide are: Epsagon, Codefresh, Hunters, Datree, Whitesource, Snyk and Axonious.
5. What is the future of this sector and Alcide?
I believe Kubernetes will be the defacto infrastructue standard for all containerized deployments and as such the need for Kubernetes Security will grow tremendously. COVID is a great catalyst for that as more and more companies and enterprises look to move fast to the cloud in a cost efficient and smooth way – this is exactly what Kubernetes allows. However, there will be more and more threat actors taking advantage of the insecure nature of Kubernetes. Alcide as the leading platform for Kubernetes Security will see great growth given this, bridging the security gap in Kubernetes and bridging the gap between DevOps to SecOps. Alcide brings an unparalleled value to companies using Kubernetes, ensuring they are safe and protected from design to production.
6. What advice would you give to young budding entrepreneurs?
My first advice would be to always listen to customers, they are the true lifeline of any company. Entrepreneurs should also surround themselves by a strong team who always push themselves to the limit and never stop innovating.
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