Reblaze- The Next-Generation Protection

Reblaze

As the Internet evolves at an accelerating rate, even security professionals can find it difficult to stay current on the multitude of ever-more-sophisticated threats and attack vectors that are possible via the Web. Thus, the need for Reblaze.

Reblaze provides proprietary security technologies in a single, unified platform. In this interview with the company’s Founder and CEO, Eyal Hayardeny, let’s find out how it all works.

Tell us about the company.

Reblaze is a cloud-based, fully managed security platform for web applications, sites, services, and APIs. We offer an all-in-one virtual private cloud (VPC) solution that includes next-gen WAF, DoS/DDoS protection, API security, bot mitigation, CDN, load balancing, real-time traffic analysis, a mobile/native app SDK, and more.

The Reblaze platform offers a unique combination of benefits. Each customer gets a dedicated VPC, geolocated right in front of the protected network to provide near-zero latency. The VPC is dedicated to that customer’s exclusive use—this not only guarantees maximum privacy but also eliminates multi-tenancy security vulnerabilities. The platform is fully managed and is always up-to-date with the latest threat signatures, automatically.

Reblaze focuses on web security; we protect organizations from all types of web-based attacks, including DDoS, breach attempts, data theft, malicious bots, API attacks, account take-overs, and more.

Reglaze uses UEBA (User and Entity Behavioral Analytics) and Machine Learning to construct behavioral profiles for each application it protects. It understands the characteristics and behavior of legitimate users, which helps defeat zero-day exploits. Even if an attack is brand-new and has never been seen before, Reblaze will still recognize it, because the attackers’ behavior will not conform to that of legitimate users.

Our onboarding process is seamless and easy. When a new customer comes on, our support team (which operates 24/7/365) takes their details and with a few clicks, deploys Reblaze as a pure-play SaaS. We are also featured on all the major cloud Marketplaces, so customers can launch Reblaze themselves directly from their cloud providers.

Reblaze is fully compliant with GDPR, SOC 1/SSAE 16/ISAE 3402, FISMA Moderate, PCI DSS, ISO 27001, FIPS 140-2, HIPAA, CSA (Cloud Security Alliance), and other standards and certifications. Our platform is ISO 27001 Certified and is a PCI DSS Certified Level 1 and Level 2 Service Provider. We are an Amazon Web Services technology partner, a Microsoft (Azure) partner, a Google Cloud partner, and most recently, a Digital Ocean partner.

What were the initial challenges you faced?

Like many companies, we’ve had to face many challenges. Initially, our main challenge was to show the world that there is a way to protect your websites and web assets in your cloud environment, keeping your traffic private and under your control. Other security solutions decrypt and process customer traffic in their infrastructure, which raises compliance and privacy issues—our approach is very different.

Plus, Reblaze is a pioneer in applying Machine Learning and other cloud-based technologies to cybersecurity. As always, being a pioneer means that the market doesn’t always understand the full advantages of what you’re doing. But we persevered, and the market has caught up since then.

Which was that point that triggered the growth of the company?

Early in the history of Reblaze, we made a name for ourselves when EL AL, the national airline of Israel, was hit with a massive DDoS attack that other security solutions couldn’t mitigate. After company executives contacted us, we defeated the attack in less than an hour.

High-profile incidents like that have gotten us a lot of attention externally, but internally within our industry, we’ve also been recognized. For example, Reblaze has been highlighted as a technological innovator during several of the annual Google Cloud Next conferences. Google even gave a demo of Reblaze during a keynote presentation, defeating a DDoS attack live from the stage.

How have the company graphs changed since the foundation? Can you share a few statistics?

Although we cannot share numbers and figures, we can say that we’ve experienced steady growth, and we are expecting these numbers to continue rising in the upcoming years. We also benefit from a very high customer retention rate, which averages about 97.5 percent annually.

What is the reason behind your company’s long-standing success?

There are many reasons, but the most important is our team. We share a vision to help any customer, big or small and give them a complete and fully managed solution. We give the customer what they want, so for example, we made our platform flexible enough to run in any environment; cloud, hybrid, service mesh, wherever. We also have a very customer-friendly pricing structure; many of our long-term customers first tried us because of this.

What are the products/services the company focuses on? How are your services different from those in the market?

Reblaze focuses on web security; we protect organizations from all types of web-based attacks, including DDoS, breach attempts, data theft, malicious bots, API attacks, account take-overs, and more. We have some differences with other solution providers, some of which I mentioned earlier: our emphasis on customer privacy and security, dedicated VPCs for each customer, applying new technologies to cybersecurity, saving money for our customers, and so on.

How do you decide to take the company a step further in terms of your products/services?

We listen to the market. Reblaze has over 400 customers worldwide, and we constantly solicit their feedback so we can supply an even better product. Our most recent release includes the capability to extend the platform through custom code, which opens up the possibility of customers creating their libraries of custom features that can then be shared with other customers.

Is there any new addition to the list of products/services? Anything exciting you would like to share?

We just delivered a version of our product that plugs into the Istio service mesh. Distributed microservice architectures are a major trend in tech, and we’re excited that Reblaze can be available to organizations that are taking advantage of it. We expect this to be a major part of our platform going forward.

Leadership

What do you think are the responsibilities of an entrepreneur?

I believe that an entrepreneur’s responsibility is to know the market and to act accordingly. One does not live in a bubble, and a business can’t advance without knowing the market.

Can you please brief us about your professional experience?

I am the CEO and co-founder of Reblaze. Before Reblaze, I was thePresident and CEO of Shamir Optical Industry, a dual-listed company traded on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange and the Nasdaq StockExchange. I am also a board member of Mercantile Discount BankLtd., and the owner and chairman of Lardan Group, which holds several companies in different fields.

What are the key achievements of your entrepreneurial journey?

I’d point to the founding of Reblaze, along with our CTO, Tzury Bar-Yochay.

This company is so revolutionary that it took only a few years before we were landing major accounts such as eBay and Forbes.

How do you look after your employees? What makes your team unique?

I believe in giving my employees the benefit of not hovering over them and letting them do what they do best. I give them all the tools they need to perform their jobs.

Is there any special experience with your clients you would like to highlight?

We’ve had so many great experiences with our customers. I already mentioned EL AL, which is still one of my favorite examples of what we can do. More recently, we started working with eBay, which has been very interesting; we’re now processing several billion http/s requests per day, just from their various web properties. And back in March, during the current viral pandemic, we had a situation where the government of Israel suddenly decided to close all schools and universities across the nation.

The Ministry of Education is one of Reblaze’s customers, and we immediately went into emergency-response mode and helped the government create a complete alternative national education system, all online. Within a matter of days, we successfully created the infrastructure to serve almost one and a half million students at home instead of in physical classrooms, and classes at all levels were up and running again immediately afterward. We were all very proud of that achievement.

The opinion of those that matter is the one that matters.

Plato

Can you tell us which your favorite book is? And your favorite part of the book?

Narcissus and Goldmund by Hermann Hesse

One person who you admire the most?

Professor Gideon Rechavi, Head of Sheba Cancer Research Center (which he founded) and a world reborn researcher in the field of cancer studies. Winner of the Israel Prize for Medical Science.

Whose business story do you find the most inspiring?

In my opinion, the story of Waze is very inspiring. From a small company that entered a very specific and already based market, to a disruptive company that is synonymous with driving all over the world.

Constant vigilance- a need or a strategy? Please share your views.

In my opinion, especially these days, it is a need and a very important one.

It’s a rat race out there. How do you cope with that?

With determination, persistence, continuous innovation, and old fashion hard work.

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