An Interview with the CEO of the First Company to Apply Deep Learning to Cybersecurity – Deep Instinct
Guy Caspi is a serial entrepreneur and CEO of Deep Instinct – the first company to apply deep learning to cybersecurity. By leveraging deep learning’s predictive capabilities, the company’s on-device, proactive solution protects against zero-day threats and APT attacks with unmatched accuracy.
With 20 years of experience in cybersecurity, big data analytics and data science under his belt, Guy has successfully implemented these domains in governmental, financial, telecom and insurance institutions while spearheading companies in senior positions through entire life cycles; from start up, accelerating growth and up to IPO in Nasdaq. Here, Guy tells CEO Today about setting up the company, as well as its business strategy and achievements.
Where did the idea for Deep Instinct come from? What was the motivation behind founding your business back in 2014?
While partaking in daily activities in the governmental and enterprise domain, the co-founders and I found that what is happening in the security market is that all companies are offering the same solution and provide the same (or very similar) technologies and fill the same purpose. With that in mind, we came to the realization that while there may be many solutions offering detection, no one is offering prevention and so no company can answer the needs of all operating systems, which led me to decide to start a company with 3 main visions in mind: prevention, prediction and super agile platform with a cross-operating system in all endpoints.
Today, when I look back, we remain the only company in the world with a mobile, server and endpoint protection and the only ones with a deep learning prediction model, reassuring our initial vision was correct.
What makes Deep Instinct unique?
Deep Instinct is a company that is reshaping the cybersecurity industry in the sense that it is changing the way people look at cybersecurity and will change the way organizations see their system’s protection. The main reason for this is that the minute you have prevention, you no longer need to rely on the weight of other systems.
In a world where people are protected from diseases and immune to viruses, there is no more need for means of protection from them.
Cybersecurity may not be bullet proof, but Deep Instinct has 20% – 30% more prevention capabilities that other players with the same dataset.
What were the hurdles that you were faced with in the process of setting up the company?
In the start-up world, naturally, one of the biggest obstacle is funding. Fortunately, with my experience, combined with the other founders’, we had the knowledge base we needed, so the main obstacles were hiring the right employees and getting the funding we needed.
What was your first big milestone and when did you cross it?
I’d have to say the company’s biggest milestone was in Q1 of 2016, and it was ensuring our first clients in the production phase were satisfied and that everything worked as expected. Seeing everything we created and implemented in customers’ environments was a true testament to all our hard work. Our claim to be a zero-day and APT protection was proven to be correct when we immediately saw that every attack we prevented had bypassed other companies.
What is your focus and business strategy for Deep Instinct for 2018?
Our focus is to grow our footprint globally and increase customer base. And enter the network technology space.
If you weren’t an entrepreneur, you would be…
A Physician.
What is your philosophy on business or life, in a nutshell?
Everything you do needs to be done with passion, fun and faith. This applies to every domain, whether it be love, relationships, friendships etc.
Website: https://www.deepinstinct.com/
