Nir Polak on regulation
From Cybersecurity Leadership with Nir Polak of SignalFire and Exabeam: Empowering Security Teams · · GraceGong
“The hockey-stick effect for Imperva really happened when regulation started pushing the need to protect applications — things like PCI and Sarbanes‑Oxley made buyers pay attention.”
On , Nir Polak, Cofounder at Exabeam, spoke about regulation during Cybersecurity Leadership with Nir Polak of SignalFire and Exabeam: Empowering Security Teams on GraceGong.
About Nir Polak
In a June 2024 interview, Nir Polak discussed the cybersecurity market and his views on the role of artificial intelligence in the field. Polak stated that "AI works really well when you have a lot of data and a large need for automation," and he identified security operations centers, endpoint security, and cloud security as areas where this intersection exists. He described the cybersecurity market as "roughly tens of billions" and said it breaks into submarkets including endpoint, network/firewall, security operations, and identity. Polak also noted that "enterprise sales cycles in security are long — typically six to nine months." Polak commented on the use of AI in both offensive and defensive contexts. He said that "protecting AI falls into two buckets: preventing data leakage from employees interacting with conversational models, and protecting your production AI from attacks like prompt injection." He also observed that "attackers are increasingly targeting non‑human identities — API keys and tokens — impersonating other systems rather than people." Reflecting on his experience at Exabeam, Polak said the company initially focused on "mid and large enterprises" and that "when you have a home run early you often incur a lot of technical debt."