From CISO to Founder: How Itzik Alvas Built Entro by Solving the Problem He Lived
March 31, 2026
In this episode of the Cult Products Podcast from Yaya, host Phill Keaney-Bolland speaks with Itzik Alvas, Co-Founder and CEO of Entro, the non-human identity and AI agent security company. Having spent years as a CISO at a major healthcare organisation and in senior roles at Microsoft, Itzik built Entro to solve the exact problem that had breached him. He shares how 200 validation conversations shaped the product before a single line of code was written, what crossing from the buyer's side to the seller's side revealed about go-to-market, and why the rise of AI agents has put Entro right at the centre of the market.
Most cybersecurity founders build for a problem they've studied. Itzik Alvas built for one that had already beaten him.
As former CISO of a large healthcare services company and responsible for the formal security of Microsoft Defender Cloud and Office 365, Itzik had been on the receiving end of non-human identity breaches before most of the industry had a name for them. When he left to co-found Entro with his partner, Adam, he wasn't guessing at the problem. He had lived it.
Non-human identities, which are the credentials applications use to authenticate against resources, databases, and infrastructure, are now the second most frequent attack vector in cybersecurity. For every human identity inside a company, there are, on average, 144 non-human identities. In a company of 1,000 people, that's 144,000 credentials most security teams cannot see, cannot track, and cannot manage. Entro was built to change that.
In this episode of the Cult Products Podcast from Yaya, host Phill Keaney-Bolland sits down with Itzik to trace the full founder journey: from idea validation to seed funding, from stealth to market, and from the CISO buying decisions he once made to the sales conversations he now leads. Itzik talks through why he conducted 200 customer interviews before writing a single line of code, how early design partners became Entro's first paying customers, and why the explosion of AI agents turned out to be not a challenge but a gift.
What You'll Learn:
As former CISO of a large healthcare services company and responsible for the formal security of Microsoft Defender Cloud and Office 365, Itzik had been on the receiving end of non-human identity breaches before most of the industry had a name for them. When he left to co-found Entro with his partner, Adam, he wasn't guessing at the problem. He had lived it.
Non-human identities, which are the credentials applications use to authenticate against resources, databases, and infrastructure, are now the second most frequent attack vector in cybersecurity. For every human identity inside a company, there are, on average, 144 non-human identities. In a company of 1,000 people, that's 144,000 credentials most security teams cannot see, cannot track, and cannot manage. Entro was built to change that.
In this episode of the Cult Products Podcast from Yaya, host Phill Keaney-Bolland sits down with Itzik to trace the full founder journey: from idea validation to seed funding, from stealth to market, and from the CISO buying decisions he once made to the sales conversations he now leads. Itzik talks through why he conducted 200 customer interviews before writing a single line of code, how early design partners became Entro's first paying customers, and why the explosion of AI agents turned out to be not a challenge but a gift.
What You'll Learn:
- Why non-human identities became the second most common attack vector and why most teams still can't see them
- How Itzik validated the Entro concept with 200 CISOs and practitioners before building anything
- What crossing from buyer to seller taught him about trust, budget, and decision-making
- Why referrals from validation interviews became Entro's most powerful early growth engine
- How to turn early design partners into paying customers without a finished product
- What the rise of AI agents means for non-human identity security, and why Entro was already positioned for it
- Why delivering something broken early is better than waiting for a polished beta
- How to build a founder network inside the cybersecurity industry
Episode Resources:
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