Driving Disruption: Ran Senderovitz Of Wing Security On The Innovative Approaches They Are Taking To Disrupt Their Industry
An Interview With Cynthia Corsetti
Ethical Foundations: Achieving long-term success with integrity. Ethics serve as our guiding principle and moral compass in our endeavors. Dignity and Respect: We are unwavering in our belief that conducting business with integrity is the only pathway to lasting success. This is non-negotiable. As simple as that.
In an age where industries evolve at lightning speed, there exists a special breed of C-suite executives who are not just navigating the changes, but driving them. These are the pioneers who think outside the box, championing novel strategies that shatter the status quo and set new industry standards. Their approach fosters innovation, spurs growth, and leads to disruptive change that redefines their sectors. In this interview series, we are talking to disruptive C-suite executives to share their experiences, insights, and the secrets behind the innovative approaches they are taking to disrupt their industries. As part of this series, we had the pleasure of interviewing Ran Senderovitz.
Ran brings an extensive business and Go-To-Market background. After retiring from unit 8200 as a Major, he held strategic leadership roles in large enterprises such as Intel and Texas Instruments. Ran serves as an advisor and board member for top technology startups.
Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series. Before we dive into our discussion about disruption, our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you share with us the backstory about what brought you to your specific career path?
My career is founded on two core principles: continuous personal growth and an unwavering focus on achieving business success, principles I inherited from my remarkable parents.
I had a unique high school experience, attending alongside my mother, an unconventional journey that may sound surprising. She serves as my constant source of inspiration for personal growth. Despite dropping out of high school in her youth, she later became a certified electrical technician, among the first women to achieve this in Israel. Her journey involved returning to high school alongside me and even pursuing criminology at university, surpassing me to earn her Master’s degree. Her commitment to self-improvement instilled in me the value of constant change and growth.
In contrast, my father is my business role model, emphasizing results above all else. At nearly 80 years old, he continues to work in the steel and metal import business my grandfather started during World War II . His wisdom in segmentation, pricing, crisis management, networking and finance, all acquired without formal business education, has made him my most trusted business mentor.
These principles, inspired by my parents, have been my guiding light throughout my career — driving my commitment to personal growth and an unwavering pursuit of tangible business success.
What do you think makes your company stand out? Can you share a story?
Our standout qualities at Wing Security are anchored in three pillars: a steadfast commitment to diversity, unwavering professionalism, and a dedication to simplicity.
Diversity: Our company is the most diverse technology company I’ve had the privilege of working for. Our diversity is a tremendous source of strength and innovation. Differing perspectives and strong viewpoints are countered by other equally strong leaders, leading to robust discussions and innovative solutions.
Professionalism: We hold ourselves to the highest standards of professionalism in every aspect of our work. We are driven by the aspiration to achieve the best possible results, and this commitment to professionalism is fundamental to our success. Each team member excels in their respective domain, contributing to our collective excellence.
Simplicity: The field of cybersecurity is inherently complex, and we understand the need to simplify it to make a meaningful impact. Our focus on simplicity enables us to navigate this complexity effectively and develop solutions that are accessible and impactful for our clients and the broader community.
You are a successful business leader. Which three character traits do you think were most instrumental to your success? Can you please share a story or example for each?
I’ve distilled these principles into three core character traits: “No win without a business win,” disruption, and dignity.
Success in business hinges on tangible results. Without a clear win for the business, there can be no victory. My commitment is to make my team successful, as their success is my success. No one will be happy if a business is downsizing, so sometimes, we have to roll up our sleeves and put in that extra effort to ensure success.
I embrace disruption. In our ever-evolving world, adapting slowly is not enough. We must boldly embrace unique and daring changes, taking calculated risks even if it means facing the consequences. Boldness drives innovation and keeps us ahead.
Lastly, dignity is paramount. In business, transactions are between people, and ethical conduct is non-negotiable. As one of Intel’s CEOs wisely put it, “If business is not conducted ethically, the victory is not worth winning.”
I vividly remember my early leadership role at Texas Instruments, where the company was transitioning from digital to analog. I refused to let our cable broadband unit decline. We rallied the team to exceed business expectations, prioritizing technology disruption customers valued, beating the competition to market by more than a full year despite being the smaller competitor. We disrupted the market, defined new standards, and gained trust. Our first volume shipment arrived at record speed, making us feel like champions of the Super Bowl, NBA Finals, and FIFA World Cup all rolled into one! After that experience, you can’t stop aspiring to feel it again and again!
Throughout, the team upheld the highest ethical standards and treated all customers with respect. These principles became embedded in our team’s culture, and achieved profound results.
Now, Wing Security is on a similar journey, committed to bringing these values to the forefront of our endeavors.
Leadership often entails making difficult decisions or hard choices between two apparently good paths. Can you share a story with us about a hard decision or choice you had to make as a leader? I’m curious to understand how these challenges have shaped your leadership.
Continuing this journey story — During my time at Texas Instruments, the business unit performed well. The company recognized the potential for significant long-tail profits from the product we had developed and encouraged me to see the project through. On a personal level, this seemed enticing. The work would have been manageable, the compensation generous, and the business results robust.
However, I couldn’t ignore that this decision would have contradicted two other fundamental principles I hold dear. Firstly, it would have been letting down customers who had placed their trust in me and my team, as well as our dedicated employees who had faith in our vision. This approach would have also run counter to my commitment to disruption. I had embarked on a journey to convince Texas Instruments to allow us to sell this business and take a riskier path in the short term, even though the company’s leadership initially had reservations about the idea. There were concerns that rumors about this move could harm the business.
I am immensely proud of our leadership team for standing firmly by these values. It was on this basis that we made the decision to sell the business to Intel — a decision I take great pride in.
Ok, thank you for that. Let’s now jump to the primary focus of our interview. Let’s begin with a basic definition so that all of us are on the same page. In the context of a business, what exactly is “Disruption”?
Disruption is about identifying unmet needs before they become widely recognized and uniquely addressing them. Disruption, though conceptually simple, takes a lot of work to identify and execute.
Let me share some examples from Wing Security:
Filling Functionality Gaps: We spot and fill functionality gaps in advance of the market. Many companies embrace transformative Software as a Service (SaaS) services without realizing the risks. We anticipated these security needs and changed the SaaS landscape.
Filling Efficient and Economic Gaps: We strongly believe that every company must secure its SaaS environment, but we’ve seen companies lacking resources in current market solutions. Our vision is to make essential security accessible to every organization on earth. We disrupted the market again by defining which protection levels are critical and making them affordable to any organization. Wing is bringing security to the masses, making it a no-brainer to deploy. We are one of the first to meet both needs of security and affordability.
In our view, this is a major disruption: Not having SaaS protection is not an option and we have removed the friction in achieving it — affordable to any company.
How do you perceive the role of ‘disruption’ within your industry, and how have you personally embraced it? Is it a necessity, a strategy, or something else entirely in your view?
Our industry is dedicated to ensuring global safety and peace in the face of vicious threats. I’m proud to be part of the defense industry, driven by a single mission: to make the world safe and better. Our adversaries and cybercriminals have nefarious intentions, willing to disrupt our lives and economy for personal gain.
These evil forces are inherently disruptive and destructive. In cybersecurity, embracing disruption isn’t just a choice; it’s a necessity. We must outpace our adversaries by being at least ten times more disruptive, anticipating their actions, identifying market gaps and making their endeavors as challenging as possible.
Let me give you an example:
- In the fast-evolving world of SaaS security, ChatGPT has become integral. Wing’s reputation database uncovered 399+ applications with “ChatGPT” in their name, some real, some rushed and risky, and others maliciously mimicking ChatGPT.
Employees eager for innovation might unknowingly endanger their organizations by connecting these apps to sensitive data or systems. To counter this threat, we must proactively find and remove these apps, using our collective knowledge and simplicity for global adoption. Staying ahead of these threats is our existential mission in the cybersecurity disruptor game.
What lessons have you learned from challenging conventional wisdom, and how have those lessons shaped your leadership style?
Our approach doesn’t compete with conventional wisdom, which has value but maintains the status quo. To align with our thesis, we must adapt.
Disruptive endeavors are bets on the future rooted in assumptions. It’s crucial to maintain business discipline by (1) documenting assumptions, (2) measuring performance and market response, and (3) making course corrections.
When introducing our SaaS security tool, we initially defined it within the conventional security framework. However, we faced messaging challenges, originally blurring the lines between security and compliance. We listened to the market, adjusted, and saw increased interest. This iterative process exemplifies disciplined disruption and innovation.
Disruptors like Yelp also inspired our innovation. We infused researched and crowdsourced SaaS security insights from our essential user communities. With them, we enhance our industry’s largest SaaS reputation database. Like Yelp’s crowd-sourced knowledge in the food industry, we’re building a community tool focused on SaaS safety. These insights are the fuel that enables us to reduce CISOs’ workloads in large organizations and empower every organization to embrace more SaaS solutions. We actively listen, set clear objectives, evaluate and adapt.
Disruptive ideas often meet resistance. Could you describe a time when you faced significant pushback for a disruptive idea? How did you navigate the opposition, and what advice would you give to others in a similar situation?
Do you mean this morning, yesterday morning, and the day before that? Disruption involves various competing ideas about the future, all equally valid or invalid. The first rule in disruption is to avoid getting trapped in biased thinking. Navigating opposition requires careful listening, and tracking business results is crucial. Celebrate minority opinions and promote diversity within your organization.
I’m proud to be part of Wing Security’s leadership, where females are a majority, both in leadership and amongst, and diversity is embraced. There’s no hierarchy during brainstorming; everyone can speak openly. We use a hierarchy for decision-making afterward, but we empower and ensure everyone is heard.
For example, when we named our entry security solution, the product team initially thought that my idea of calling it “compliance-grade security” was foolish. I pushed for it due to our partnership with a leading compliance company. We had two opinions, and I decided after considering the other ideas. This willingness to listen led us to be more tuned in to the market, measure its response, and I discovered I was wrong. In three weeks, we adjusted and started winning. I’m thankful to the product team for voicing their opinions; without that, we wouldn’t have had the right metrics to track. That’s my leadership lesson.
Ok super. Here is the main question of our interview. What are your “Five Innovative Approaches We Are Using To Disrupt Our Industry”?
- Identifying New and Unique Needs: We proactively search for unfulfilled demands. For example, at Wing Security, we recognize the universal need for security — not only for the reacher organizations. We firmly believe that every business, regardless of size, deserves protection. Security should not only be the privy of the reach. It is like saying that every house needs a lock. We uniquely identified a standard-based essential security tier — built of measures that can be deployed cheaply by any company, and we implemented them in a very cost-effective way, ensuring a safer environment for all.
- Adopting a Surprising Strategy: Constantly reevaluate the means to meet needs: In Wing, we realized the connection between SaaS security and the community. We are enhancing our SaaS research through community wisdom. We had the insight that to combat evolving threats, we need our security community to collaborate. By enabling protection to these smaller businesses, we gain invaluable insights from hundreds and soon thousands of companies regarding these SaaS and usage. We share these insights with our reputation database across the community, and we also use these insights to create unique automation and alerts that take away most of the human elements in our higher-tiered security products. Our community flourishes, enabling us to create workflows for complex organizations. Conversely, the success of larger businesses drives innovation and financially enables us to reach more companies across all tiers.
- Measurable Results: This approach fosters a virtuous cycle of continuous improvement and excellent results we constantly strive to measure our customer’s reaction to our new features, understand the cost vs reward, and take a very business-first approach to measure innovation. We measure marketing success by engagement, and we measure product fit by usage and willingness to pay. To me, this is the ultimate measure of innovation. We take huge pride in our customer retention rate — proving to us that we are on the right track.
- Valuing Diversity: Fearlessly incorporating minority perspectives. Diversity is a cornerstone principle at Wing Security, and we strive to maintain an environment that embraces varied viewpoints. As I mentioned, we are committed to diverse representation: We have achieved 50% representation of women in tech roles, and over 55% of our leadership positions are held by women. We celebrate controversy; we also maintain the agility necessary for swift decision-making. This is unique and hard to achieve.
- Ethical Foundations: Achieving long-term success with integrity. Ethics serve as our guiding principle and moral compass in our endeavors. Dignity and Respect: We are unwavering in our belief that conducting business with integrity is the only pathway to lasting success. This is non-negotiable. As simple as that.
Looking back at your career, in what ways has being disruptive defined or redefined your path? What surprises have you encountered along the way?
Disruptiveness is survival in action. It’s about taking risks for a brighter future and bravely facing the consequences. Let me share a personal story of self-disappointment that illustrates this.
One of the most challenging times in my career was when I moved to the U.S. for Intel with my wife and daughters, ages 12 and 16, leaving my 20-year-old as a “lone soldier” in the Israeli army. They had to adapt to a new country and complete their formal education in two years. The fear of losing my job, which would have affected our immigration status, made me conform and shy away from all-in disruption.
For a year and a half, I didn’t embrace disruption, driven by fear and the pressure to conform. It was only later that I rediscovered my purpose and started advocating for disruptive thinking, even if it wasn’t universally accepted. I faced professional consequences, but I made a promise to myself: I would only work in environments where I could pursue disruption and make a positive impact.
Beyond professional accomplishments, how has embracing disruption affected you on a personal level?
I would just say that I love to celebrate life.
I absolutely adore celebrating life without extravagance. It’s about doing what I love with cherished people, not for validation but pure joy.
Take my piano playing; despite undiagnosed dyslexia causing frequent mistakes, I find joy. I tackle challenging pieces like Bach’s Goldberg Variations, breaking my own limits, and it’s pure happiness.
I love the outdoors. Simple camping, amazing nature. Casual trips with my fantastic family disrupt our routines, and every moment is cherished. Excited for more beautiful memories ahead.
I love seeing leadership in action: watching Steph Curry — a basketball disruptor in live action, is a source of inspiration.
In your role as a C-suite leader, driving innovation and embracing disruption, what thoughts or concerns keep you awake at night? How do these reflections guide your decisions and leadership?
Sleepless nights haunt me, all because of one relentless fear: failing those by my side. As I gamble in the future, I know I’ll make mistakes. I embrace growth, yet I wonder if I’ve crossed my limits. I’m ruthlessly self-critical, fearing I’ll disappoint those who trust me.
My colleagues push me to my best, keeping me sharp and forcing introspection. Seeking advice, this burden is relentless, emotionally draining.
You are a person of great influence. If you could start a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. :-)
I am committed to fighting populism. I am deeply concerned about the significant influence that populists and extremists can wield worldwide. They have the power to polarize societies, which should be celebrating diversity but instead are torn apart by divisiveness and hatred. This emerging source of discord is a pressing concern in many places and would be dedicated to countering its impact.
How can our readers further follow your work online?
I first invite them to try our disruptive product online in their companies — at the basic tier — it’s as affordable as free and eventually at full and as impactful as a comprehensive solution for your enterprise requirements.
You can follow my professional journey on LinkedIn, where I share my passion for work, and catch a glimpse of my zest for life on Instagram at @ranturi.
Thank you for the time you spent sharing these fantastic insights. We wish you only continued success in your great work!
About the Interviewer: Cynthia Corsetti is an esteemed executive coach with over two decades in corporate leadership and 11 years in executive coaching. Author of the upcoming book, “Dark Drivers,” she guides high-performing professionals and Fortune 500 firms to recognize and manage underlying influences affecting their leadership. Beyond individual coaching, Cynthia offers a 6-month executive transition program and partners with organizations to nurture the next wave of leadership excellence.
