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Nir Zuk

Founder Emeritus & Advisor, Palo Alto Networks

Search every verified Nir Zuk interview, podcast appearance, and on-the-record quote — each transcript cross-checked by AI and human review to confirm speaker identity. Nir Zuk, founder and CEO of Cylake and former founder of Palo Alto Networks, appeared on the podcast "Inside Cybersecurity" on May 27, 2026, to discuss his new venture. Zuk stated that the cybersecurity industry requires a new architecture, arguing that existing platforms from companies like Microsoft, Google, and Palo Alto Networks collect data into "data puddles that don't talk to each other." He said Cylake is designed to collect all data into a single data lake, where different security functions can operate on the complete set of data. Zuk described the new system as requiring on-premises hardware rather than cloud delivery, saying "this cannot be done in the cloud" due to cost and the need to run on physical infrastructure. He characterized the approach of cloud-based security vendors as "naive" for attempting to protect customer data without direct access to it. Zuk said Cylake's product will be available in early 2027 and that he assembled a team with experience building hardware appliances, primarily from Palo Alto Networks.

Recent appearances

Notable quotes

“To think that cyber security vendors can protect something that they've never seen which they've never seen is again naive. But that's what the cyber security industry is doing today. They're trying to protect your crown jewels without ever seeing your crown jewels.”

“It's very naive to think that I use the word innocent. Naive. It's very naive to think that [large cloud security vendors] don't have vulnerabilities. They don't write vulnerabilities. And when you run something on premise and you have tens of racks running your cyber security infrastructure and there's one IP address with logically one fiber... And you can block that IP address from being able to communicate to the ”

“This cannot be done in the cloud. The answer is the cloud is too expensive. And the way you build applications in the cloud, if you're a SaaS vendor, a cyber security vendor trying to deliver your cyber security function or functions from the cloud. The way you build them is you look at the pricing model of your cloud provider, whether it's AWS or Azure or GCP, and then you adjust your products based on that. And the”

“If you're a government and you have some secrets that you don't want leaking out in the next 30 years, then you should worry right now about changing your encryption algorithms to be quantum resistant or to not be able to be broken by quantum computers. Actually, the US government has mandated that across federal agencies because they're worried about it.”

“So personally, I think that quantum computing is one of Silicon Valley's biggest hoax. It's going to turn out to be a really, really expensive hoax, where any physicist that is not working on quantum computing believes that it's not going to happen, and only those that work on quantum computing and will benefit from quantum computing think it's going to happen.”

Other executives at Palo Alto Networks

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