Welcome to Cybersecurity Insights, the podcast for the CyberEd.io learning community. Our goal is to bring Cybersecurity practitioners the latest and most relevant education and training to upskill and dive deeper into topics that matter in today's modern Cybersecurity world. Good day, everyone. This is Steve King.
I am the Managing Director at Subreddit.io. Today we have Yoshi Applebaum who's the CEO and co-founder of Sepio Systems on the show with us. I've known Yoshi for seven or eight years now, not only one of the smartest and most innovative thinkers in this space, he's also a man of complete integrity. I wanted to bring him on today to talk about what his perspective is on current job he's doing, which is to run a very successful security company while at the same time fighting a war in Israel, which indeed is what he's doing.
Yoshi was, interestingly, the guy who discovered the Silicon Back door and motherboards that were coming from China in, I think, the 2018 kind of time frame being manufactured, distributed through the super micro-suppoly chain out of San Jose, ending up with every federal government agency on the planet. And so that distinction alone is pretty remarkable. That was a huge Bloomberg story that suddenly disappeared after running for a couple of weeks. There's no doubt what was going on there, and there's no doubt what the result remains today, but that's a completely different story for another giant perhaps.
So yeah, Yoshi's been in space for 25, 30 years or so, a very smart network guy, and we welcome him to the show and forward to hearing his perspective on what's going on in Gaza and in Israel and on the future of this war. It's a challenging time. It's not the first war I've involved in as an adult, and it doesn't make it easier. It's like every startup is totally different.
Sorry, so every time we have an event like that, and the thing lined between a military operation to a war, it's more like a political statement than anything else. And I started my career in the intelligence in 1991. In 1995, there was a major military operation in Lebanon. In 1997, I don't remember.
It was a major operation in Gaza. And since then, you know, like every couple of years, there is a big cycle. But this one is different in any perspective to any operation we had in the history of Israel, because in Yom Kippur, or a 2,500 athletes, soldiers were killed within the scope of the war, and Israel was way smaller. I was killed in all that, but it was way smaller than almost every house, at least an immediate relationship to someone who died.
Our neighbors lost two sons in one week, and it's devastating. But this time it was totally different, because civilian, out in 100, so let's assume like 1,100 civilian were murdered, including kids, and it's not murdered, it's slaughtered. It literally brought back that, you know, some people are still not even digesting, and I'm talking about people from my own that are still, you know, struggling with their day to day and not digesting, it's, I don't like the comparison, you know, population size versus that to what's in US, meaning, you know, 30,000 US numbers and all of that, it's bullshit, you know, it means nothing. But it means that, or 1,100 people are not talking about soldiers that, you know, soldier, you know, soldier, you may die.
But even a soldier should not be left on the field burned, and a missing ad, because someone thought to take that to his village in order to show out big many. So, you know, we are fighting animals, and unfortunately, teachers like that should be treated in a way that will save the world from their existence. Yeah, and okay, I mean, you know, there's no doubt that these are uncivilized savages with a very specific agenda to wipe out Israel and if they could, the West. And so, it's hard to fathom, frankly, from where I said, why the rest of the world doesn't kind of get this, right?
Why are there any people in the United States that look at this and they all cheer on Hamas or cheer on the Palestinians, other than just pure ignorance. I mean, I get pure ignorance, we have way too much of that, but, you know, how are the communications failing us so badly that people because communication eventually delivers, we need to remember that we live in a world that first communication delivers what people want to hear because otherwise people don't hear and then there's no commercials. And the second thing is, even internally, the story of, you know, if people in the West Bank will come and say, hey, Israel occupies us, which is true, by the way, in the West Bank. Not in Gaza.
Israel is not in Gaza since 2005. And Israel is occupying us, and we are the weak part of the story, and it's not fair, and we want our country. And, you know, people don't listen to history. Yeah, you've got the five or six times chance to get your country, and you chose always the path of terror.
But let's ignore that when civilian in Gaza, in tens of thousands, close the border after Hamas broke the border and came to wait, women and came to steal the stuff and murder just what they say of fun. And hundreds of thousands of them were cheering and using violence again, hitting up elderly and kids in the streets, that's not civilian anymore. When you pick your child outside and support the terror organization in my eyes, you are always, regardless if you all the weapon or just the seat. And in addition to that media, well, there are plenty of reasons, but, you know, there are plenty of media toilets that generally, speaking, their teams are literally local teams in Gaza, like, you know, all that's from Gaza, and the story they bring is, you know, literally no one even doubts.
So Hamas says someone blocked their office, well, Hamas is a terror organization. Why won't we believe them? And they say Israel, so it makes sense because it's a terror organization. There is no chance they lie, right?
And after 48 hours, everyone had to come back and say, yeah, most probably, what do you mean most probably? We have records of Hamas leaders talking to each other. What do you mean most probably? Yeah, I don't know how much that influences the world, but the world is in this dilemma for a really, really long time, right?
I mean, there's thousands of years. And no matter where you go, almost in America, Western Europe, or Eastern Europe, you know, you have this discrimination and this hatred and it follows you guys around. I mean, you know, no one can explain it, including my Jewish mother. I think it's because there's no logical explanation to that always, you know, you know, and it's not always from outside, you know, the big poll, Ahmad, what is planned here in Rockville, Maryland on Sunday is led by two Jews that clearly progressive, extremely left wing and extremely, you know, we need to stop the fire, like, let's get the ceasefire for the sake of everyone.
And I keep saying on October 6, we have the ceasefire, we didn't break it on October 7 morning. They woke the ceasefire, and now they want the ceasefire, let's finish the work and they will be quiet, but we need an ID, my government. And believe me, I'm not extreme in any way, but I demand my government and I will test against my government to death if they will not satisfy the need for security and the need for security is at this moment that Gaza will be a test case because otherwise Hezbollah will do the claim and we need to remove Gaza to ground. I'm not talking about killing everyone, but we need to remove Gaza.
There will be no standing building in Gaza for several years and if they'll build them, we'll break them. But that will be a memory that the state Israelis lost their mind. And for the next two generations, they will think at the end and again, if it makes sense, you should even one bullet because otherwise 1400 or 1100, whatever the number is, will be 10 times bigger or 100 times bigger because the only thing they do is taking the money that ships and innocent give them and steal it from the people in order to build an army. Yeah, of course.
And what you want to try to get the hostages out safely and captured soldiers out safely, when do you decide that it's done the best you can, you can't do anymore, it's time to just turn everything to them. It's something that the most special will put, shorten the time that they will bring them by themselves in order to avoid that. And if your threat will be a reality, you may lose some kidnap and unfortunately, it's my people. But on October 7th, at the end of the day, I called the deputy ambassador here in DC and I said, you know, we will start protesting and supporting Israel and all that, but listen, I consider the kidnap and I'm protesting to the release and all that, but I consider them as a loss.
We lost everyone and everyone that will get back is a big surprise and a gift from God. But until we'll, if we'll put that as a wake on our shoulders, we will actually decrease the chance we'll get them. So, brutality in this time is the right time, it's the right thing, not just for retaliation. And revenge, revenge is necessary here because we live in a tough neighborhood and these neighbors should see what happens when we lose our mind.
But in parallel to that, this will increase the minimum chance of getting this back. What do you expect from Hezbollah? Hezbollah is not, I would guess, you know, things are so fluid, but I would guess that Hezbollah will not get full blown into that because their power is always by making a surprise. There's no surprise anymore, right?
The entire relevant Israeli army is there. So, for them, it's getting into, you know, face-to-face fight, which they have no chance in that. They may yield fuel, will kill more. In this situation, Hezbollah is very limited, the ability of surprising.
Yes, they have an unbelievable amount of rocket and this rocket, you know, can be stopped to a degree in the sky and that being stopped right now quite successfully, you know, about 90% never touch ground. Having said that, they still can break a lot of damage. I would, I, you know, if I would wish, I would wish that Hezbollah will jump into that because we need to clean that area and I would say that if Hezbollah is not doing that, we know the mistake we did with Hamas is that, you know, their, if the intelligence said it will be on Sunday, Saturday morning or not, no one cares because that's not the right answer. It's not the right question.
The information was there, up to leadership, you just listen to them. We're going to conquer you. Here's my, here's videos of Hamas playing and people are doing the thing. So I don't know what Hezbollah really do.
To be honest, I don't think Hezbollah knows yet what Iranians that will tell them eventually to do. Having said that, I think Israel cannot like Hezbollah to stay away with that because they have the same plan. They publish the plan. So hopefully we'll have that one after another, not both of them in the same time because, you know, it is a lot.
But I hope that when we'll finish with Gaza, we will be quarking because if we won't be quarking, there will be the next Saturday morning on October 7, 24 where Hezbollah will surprise us. So I prefer to pay the price in advance and civilians will not be hurt. You afford to pause this war at this point. I mean, yeah, Gandhi is really army, but he is really military to feed a combined armed force between Hamas and Israel.
Israel is in its best situation in wars since ever. You know, our previous wars, like young people war was disaster. We literally almost lost the count. We are not even close to that situation now, not even in a real, you know, in a mode close proximity to where we were in 73.
And you know, actually, I wrote you an email about that, you know, seriously, my 10 year old daughter was looking because she talks to our grandparents and she talks to my brother that lives there and her and her cousins and all of that. And she was like, that I really worried. Maybe we should invite everyone here. And we did.
But what happens if he's red losing? And I was like, we cannot lose. And she was like, how do you know that? And I was like, first of all, way stronger than they are and we are way equipped than they are.
But we can't lose. That's not an option. And it's really hard to understand that without going there, you know, people ask why 8200 generated so many companies, people ask why these startups as a bigger sense of success in the eyes of investors than others, the same mentality, like, you cannot get into a project and not complete it. It may take more time.
It may take more money. It may take, but failure does not exist. Does not exist. That's literally the core element in the culture and some may say you because some companies should not have stayed because they really don't bring anything.
And some projects never should have been built. You know, there was a legendary Israeli place idea about building our own jet plane years ago. So we had in the 80s, an initiative called de la vie, which is like a lion and it was the most advanced, seriously, the most advanced technology in jet planes in, you know, like fighter jets in the world. F-22 and F-35 are way advanced, but you know, 30, but we couldn't afford that and but they, you know, they go and they need to be under our own and, you know, not be controlled by anyone push that and we, I think we spend more than $10 billion on an idiotic thing.
So sometimes the non failure culture is dangerous, but generally speaking, in a war situation, we cannot lose, we'll fight until we'll win when it's not, you know, white flag or something like that. We've been in white flag and my, you know, in Auschwitz, that's not going to happen again. Yeah. Yeah.
Indeed. I was the international community. What do you feel about any support at all around the world? We do.
It's actually unbelievable a surprise to see what's going on now in Europe. I think the first, the governments in Europe, I think almost all the governments in Europe are very supportive, you know, the British, of course, but also the French and Italian and all the Eastern Europe, I'm not talking about the Russians, but of course the Ukraine and, and the Poland and, and, and, and Hungary and all that, I was extremely supportive and we can hear the voices that coming from their parliament of, you know, a big boviolutans than the Israeli government in a way. The people are different, you know, Japan, Germany is very, well, for obvious reasons, of course, but the common people in the street depends if they're, you know, progressive or less aggressive. And of course, all Europe is flooded with, you know, immigrants from Italy's that doesn't make it easier, but this protest against Israel is also a protest against the, you know, the Scotland Yard in London and against that.
So it's not an Israeli problem. In South Africa, we got amazing support in New Zealand. We got, we got unbelievable support. The really, really nice thing to see now, even if it's not always public, is the amazing support we got from the, you know, the emirate and from even Saudi Arabia, Saudi Arabia was very, very, very vocal about that.
But, you know, behind the scenes, even said, you've got really good indicators about support from the Middle East and in the global, you know, a close person to me that she's working closely with, you know, placing more money for equipment and all of that, she got a donation of more than a million dollars from a very rich family in the emirate. And then asked was only one thing. Make sure that every bullet we pay is going to kill a Hamas guy and not just being shot for no reason. Yeah.
How is the company doing? So it's okay. You know, we, the population, the demographic of Sapeo in Israel is less young people. So we have only few people that were called to their unit or reserve time, but many are giving their time, spare time to, you know, there's a lot of initiatives from cooking on made food to the soldiers to support so many families that lost their houses there and literally lost everything.
So Sapeo is deeply involved and Sapeo people, more than anything else, are deeply involved in that. So that's one thing. And we assume that there will be a bit of an impact on our few fall results because of the, of course, some exposure to the Israeli customer that, you know, the economy is tensile and some Middle East leads may, you know, it's easy to go behind the scenes, but officially issue a PO in time like that. I, I, you know, maybe I'll be surprised, but my assumption is not going to be.
Yeah. Oh, we're not going to have to know. But you never know. You know, we have a discussion with two Saudi companies and they'll extremely pushing forward.
Who's the my? So you never know. My question was, was that was, you know, prior to October 6th, what, how was the company doing in terms of, you know, market traction and, you know, understanding and brand authority and brand awareness around around what you three was the, a great quote of us. We wanted the largest contact ever.
It's a, you know, more, it's a seven-figure contact for Sapeo paid in advance, which is nice. I call it non-dilutive investment almost, but seriously, I think that with Glags work, by the way, on, on Capital T1 opportunities, yeah, we have T1 banks playing and we have a huge manufacturing and the DOD and DHS and, and, and, and, and, and quite successful a journey through 22 and, and, and up to now. But I think that one of the amazing things is that I saw it through my career is that when you get your first six-digit contact, you are so happy, but then one piece of your mind, at least my mind is like, is it going to be now a repetitive thing or one time? And if it's one time, how can I explain that to my investors?
So because then there is a case. And then you see that the repetitive six-figure happens if you are successful. And then you see the first 72, they're not like, okay, great news, bad news. And then you see that, suddenly, seven-figure looks repetitive.
And, and I think that, that is a very strong indication that we see all across verticals from smart campuses, to manufacturing, to healthcare costs, to, to pharma, to government, of course, and financials. It's, it's going all around. I think that, you know, we are going to be one of these real companies that in 24 will be not a burning any money anymore. And we are going to, together with other ships and not just selling directly to customers like the published one with Lenovo, we are doing quite nicely exposure to, you know, T1 opportunities that are in, in a magnitude that we've never been exposed to.
That's great. And congratulations, Greg, for bringing that in that big one. Maybe we'll keep him. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. Nice guy. He was worried about it.
Have you changed the product at all since the last time we chopped? We, there was a lot of evolution to the product, I would say. So, you know, one of the really cool things that we realized after the last time we spoke was, you know, the need for visibility is not a nice to have. And the challenge always is how do you define the visibility and what do you want to get out of that?
What is the business problem you solve? Because visibility for the sake of visibility is cool, but who's paying for that? And, and our, I think journey in the last several months was quite successful in showing that our ability to totally focus where it is important saves time, saves money and, and decrease the chance for depend on the vertical, depend on the customer to have bad days. And bad days, it's not always an attack or something like this is the worst day.
But it's sometimes, you know, something that you are outside your policy, outside your needs to be compliant with some regulation or whatever. And, and, and I believe that we did quite a good job in the last several months on communicating that in the right way. And there was a bit of an impact on the product because, you know, the feedback was like, hey, but how can you automate that as much as possible? So we had to highlight features or give more attention to functionality or user, usability of functions that were not highlighted as, as in today.
How about generally AI as a leverage opportunity for you? So it's funny, we had a discussion about that literally two days before the war and, and it is quite valuable for the, let's call it the midterm future. One thing that I believe cyber solutions should be is to be not a tool but a member of your team. So if you have a tool that you go and use and, and, and digest information based on the fact that you need to reach out to the tool, it's not efficient enough.
People don't have time, CISOs and, and security teams are overwhelmed with so much information. But if you have a system that can bring the information to you in a human way and, and come out with suggestions and proposals on how to mitigate and let you answer simple questions, do you want me to do it for you or other organizations because we see a global thing, other organizations from your type is doing ABCD in terms of policies and you're doing only A and B, would you like us to suggest policies that will help you to be better secure? And then by click of a mouse or a voice, whatever is the communication, you can solve a problem before it is even becoming a problem or becoming better aware to threat, to a risk to whatever. I think generative AI here is the right, let's call it Fontend for providing that interaction with even smart user, not just inexperienced ones.
Yeah, there are a lot of pretty simple use cases. It seems to me that you can leverage their own and, you know, get some, get some product advantage as well. So that's great. You know, I probably out of time here, I appreciate you doing it the last minute, Josie, and it must, I don't know how it must be fighting a war and running a company at the same time, but I had my ad swap to you and Greg and the rest of your team.
And you know, I wish you guys the best and I hope we figure out a way to end this thing in a way that, as you say, to your earlier point, changes the landscape and doesn't, doesn't make this just another treaty or truce or peace or pause or whatever we used to call them or the last five or six or seven of these things, you know, it's got to stop. It's got to stop. So I wish you the best. Steve, thank you so much for your support and your warm words and your email before, but I would add one thing.
This is something that everyone wants and peace is achieved by people, for people, by leaders. We need leaders on the other side and on our side that are willing to do that part, but first we need to deal with people and with human beings and the entire story of Gaza is not dealing with human beings and unfortunately Israel need to take a stand and protect our country because otherwise there will be no interviews and discussions about how it is to be a CEO of an Israeli company if we want the protective enough. Absolutely. Absolutely.
I agree on it. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you, sir.
Thank you. So thanks again to our audience. Hopefully this was entertaining and informative and give you a much broader perspective on what's actually happening in the Middle East as we speak. And until next time, I'm your host, Steve King, signing out.
Thank you for joining us for another episode of Cybersecurity Insights. You can connect with us on LinkedIn or Facebook or send us an email at social at cybered.io. For more information about the podcast, visit cybered.io forward slash podcast. Until next week, stay safe and secure and we'll see you on the next episode of Cybersecurity Insights.