Cybersecurity: An Attackers Perspective

Last week’s Behind the Markets podcast featured Liran Grinberg, co-founder of venture capital firm Team8, which has a deep focus on cybersecurity-related issues and who collaborated with WisdomTree to create the WisdomTree Team8 Cybersecurity Index. 

We discussed the unique background of many Team8 members, and how the company built a village of technology specialists to establish, grow and invest in the cybersecurity ecosystem.

Grinberg was a member of an elite unit known as 8200, which is the largest intelligence operation within the Israeli military. Grinberg shared lessons from 8200’s recruiting and its fast pace—how the turnover every three years leads to a wide acceptance that most missions will be a failure, but they can keep giving the same missions to new teams to see if they can be innovative. Being very “failure tolerant” is one principle of 8200 that leads to so much success—and the rotation from 8200 to industry helped Israel become known as the “Start-up Nation.” 

Team8 believes there are seven themes driving the future of cybersecurity, and one unique insight Team8 brings is the attacker’s perspective—with a number of former intelligence team members who applied the offensive side of cyberattacks. But Team8 also has the practical perspective of chief security officers as part of their village of specialists.

Below are details on the seven themes Team8 uses to evaluate cybersecurity companies and trends.

For definitions of terms in the table, please visit our glossary.

In addition to the above themes, our podcast also touched on important topics, including:

1. The relationship between cryptocurrencies and Bitcoin to ransomware.
2. How important quantum computing will be, especially with regard to encryption, and how software companies are already preparing for the future when quantum computing becomes widespread. Grinberg mentioned that a lot of work in quantum computing is happening in Europe, which surprised me as the region is not often known for technology leadership. 
3. What you can do to protect your own data—it’s always great to hear what the true cybersecurity professionals do. 

This was a great discussion on the important issues in cybersecurity, all through the attacker’s perspective lens that Team8 brings to the space. Please listen to the full conversation below: