The Cyber Defense eMagazine February Edition for 2024

As I reflect back on the past few months and understand that the situation is still ongoing, I’d like to share
a few insights that I’ve learned about crisis management, which have implications beyond Israel and the
current war.
It’s all about priorities
In ordinary times, prioritizing projects and resources is a somewhat leisurely task. Each division and each
person knows what they ought to focus on, and though managers must still make decisions it’s usually
rather obvious which task should be performed, by whom, and in what order.
Not so in a crisis.
As soon as war broke out, one of my co-founders, a senior officer in the Israeli army’s cybersecurity unit,
was drafted immediately. Approximately 45 percent of our engineering team members were also called
in to serve. I realized that we were not going to have as many people as we needed to keep business
running the same way it had before.
Immediately, we prioritized the urgent short-term goals that were critical to supporting our customers.
This was an obvious decision, but we soon learned, a few days in, that unless we adjusted our priorities
once again, we’d remain in a cycle of underproduction, addressing nothing but the most pressing needs
and losing our competitive edge for the future. For example, we needed to stabilize R&D. To help with
less complex integration work, we onboarded a high-quality external development team, while the
remaining core team could focus on more strategic demands. The result was reassuring: we were quickly
back to capacity, even at a time of crisis.
Be a Visible Leader
When a crisis strikes, there is no greater priority than making sure your team sees you, can talk to you,
and gain reassurance from you. At the start of the war, we located and connected with every employee
in Israel to check on them and their families. Their safety and well-being were our top priority. I
encouraged employees to work at home, while still having an active office for employees who wanted the
normalcy of being at work around fellow employees. For remote workers, we kept an open Zoom meeting
to facilitate collaborative work and foster team inclusion and communication. We had a dedicated
WhatsApp channel for Israeli employees to be able to request help day or night. I held virtual coffee
breaks and company all hands to keep everyone informed and connected. I reached out to customers
and was overwhelmed by their compassion and support.
Visible leadership goes beyond the role of the CEO. Right after the war broke out, our co-founder and
CTO, Tomer Schwartz, stepped in to lead R&D. He asked questions, deputized a host of employees who
weren’t in service, and empowered them to follow his lead and run projects and teams outside of their
normal roles. He made himself visible and available to customers, prospects, and employees all around
the world. It didn’t matter what time it was or day it was. He and the team could be counted on to show
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