CxO of the Week: Yaki Faitelson, CEO of Varonis

Yaki Faitelson is the CEO, President, and Co-Founder of Varonis. Faitelson also provides input on the strategic direction of the Varonis brand as a Chairman of the Board. His insightful input has been crucial to guiding the Varonis team in their mission to create a unique data storage solution.

Varonis launched in 2005 as part of a joint vision by Ohad Korkus and Yaki. These data storage experts wanted to give businesses more visibility into their data, and more opportunities to protect critical information. Today, the Varonis platform stores collects, and analyses metadata in a way that’s intuitive, yet non-intrusive. 

Changing the Data Landscape

Yaki didn’t have much of a presence in the technology landscape before he helped to create the Varonis company. Faitelson has mentioned working at the global professional services and system integrations divisions of companies like NetApp and NetVision in the past. He worked in these companies with his co-founder, Ohad Korkus, helping the organisations to strengthen their file systems.

In 2005, Korkus and Faitelson filed their patent for a platform that could provide the automatic management of storage access control. The license was granted in 2006, and the result was an Intelligent Data Use classification platform, DatAdvantage. 

Yaki built on years of experience in cybersecurity, operating systems, and networking in the creation of the Varonis brand. Together, he and Korkus architected the foundation of the Varonis Data Security Platform. 

Becoming a Pioneer in Storage Systems

Today, Yaki holds numerous patents for permissions simulation, data analysis, and visualisation. Under his leadership, the Varonis company has undergone massive growth, cultivating a global installation base. Today, Faitelson stands out as one of the market leaders in the storage and data management environment. 

In 2014, Yaki won the award for Entrepreneur of the Year from EY, in the technology category.