Jeremy Weisz 16:14
They may have like 100, or 200 to 300 clients that they can use.
Ran Geva 16:18
Exactly. So as I said, usually, MSPs are reactive, managing your fire hose many of your company’s security. But the next generation of MSPs are also proactive, making sure beforehand that you are not being threatened. So they’re connected to many, many, many brands and Lunar and cyber field, which goes to the machines is used by MSPs. And so, our cyber feed or data feed is usually used by companies who are serving brands, kind of the b2b2b.
Jeremy Weisz 16:57
They’re more tactical. So your sales process is interesting, because when someone goes down, they want to talk to an expert. Usually the people clicking that is maybe a cybersecurity expert that runs 100 companies and is protecting 100 companies, and they’re using your solutions to really, maybe upper level, what they’re currently doing or add to what they’re currently doing.
Ran Geva 17:20
Yeah, yeah. And surprisingly enough, when we initially launched a dark web feed, we could have the same way we sold open web feeds, we kind of gave them access and test it around to see if they find value. And surprisingly, or not surprisingly, they did not. And what we found is that it’s not as easy to find the needle in the haystack in the dark web, there’s a special jargon you need to use. It’s not like hacking Samsung, right? It’s not.
Jeremy Weisz 17:54
Right. I’m thinking it’s like, what keyword do you use to find out like, let’s say someone’s doing mass shooting, they’re not saying I’m going to do a mass shooting, right? I mean, there’s other things that they’re saying that you need to detect, I imagine.
Ran Geva 18:09
So for each category does indifferent and evolving, set off phrases that you need to monitor for example, FULLZ that’s FULLZ that’s kind of a nickname for credit card leaked credit card information. So if you don’t know the jargon, you won’t be able to pinpoint it because there’s a lot of noise there. So when we onboard when we make a trial with a client, we make sure and we go and make a kind of a POC and we hear their use case and we show them the value before of course they buy and then many times extremely surprised how the best information or the polls are online especially if there are big burn and otherwise they wouldn’t be able to find this information if they don’t have an expert that will lead them and help them find a value.
Jeremy Weisz 19:02
So I don’t know if you know this if you’re that close to it, but what is some of the jargon that you have found from like these, I mean, I feel like I turn on my news every day and there is a mass shooting going on. Have you as a company found here’s what we’re seeing some of the languages on the dark web or some of these other social platforms that people can be anonymous.
Ran Geva 19:29
So, I’m not that close to it, but you would like to search for caliber for mm millimeter, not necessarily only for pistol but also for towards that around it like a pistol caliber or millimeter. So talking about firearms, right? Not necessarily, you need to operate two handguns and Glock in the day A gene four and information around this domain of weapon because that’s going to be just chewed or. But that’s the role of weapons again around writing it’s that’s why we have cyber analysts that anytime go and research and come up with a report or with how you got to go ahead because they themselves learn by reading by starting in the domain and reading posts and see how people are talking and speaking and learning jargon, and then making sure the client will have the right information to search and find relevantly in data.
Jeremy Weisz 20:50
Yeah, I want to talk about pricing for a second. How do you decide to price this? It seems it’d be difficult to do that. I also want to give a shout, Ran, before we did the interview, I sent your information to Matthew Connor, he runs CyberLynx. He’s got a great podcast, The Cyber Business Podcast, and I was saying these may be some solutions that you would like. So I sent that to Matt. So shout out to his podcast because he has cyber professionals and experts on his show. But pricing wise, so someone comes to you, they’re like, okay, I’m interested, and how does it work.
Ran Geva 21:27
So, there’s different that pricing point to different type of vertical. I think with everything in life, it is more expensive, the more difficult to obtain, or the more rare. So say the open web or multiple competitors kind of easier to do it yourself in a sense to a level. And the more difficult and resource intensive your service is the more expensive. So the dark web is much, much, much I think could be five to 10 fold more expensive than the open web per number of API calls. So we price per the amount of data that you need. And of course, we can start small, you don’t need a lot of information and doesn’t mean anything, of course. And that’s kind of an interesting journey. We went through pricing wise had a company that had self-serving subscription on the website, $39 a month, for the open web going up to I think it was 500 or something like that a month, which sounded expensive. When we just started and we were happy people just pay to lock by the way that you can’t, there’s a KYC, not anyone can have access to dark web. Again, legal aspects that are also important, who can what can be and how you can search and dark web. After all, it’s a search engine we collect information that by nature is unlisted and can contain sensitive information. So we’ve got of course, the legal advice about how to make sure the clients are searching only about their IP, and not competitor or using or isn’t the search engine to harm. So it’s certainly not open to the public. It’s only for companies who are dealing with cybersecurity or digital risk protection. And also they need to and the most search and monitor into their clients that have permission to do that. Or themselves. That’s extremely important. I like the Openweb. Openweb can do whatever you want. Because public information and news blogs, message boards, reviews, etc.
Jeremy Weisz 23:49
I want to get to in a bit how the war affected you in the company. But let’s just talk about you mentioned, the dark web monitoring for security purposes. And then you came out with this article. Dark web news. If you’re watching the video, by the way, you can see we’re on webz.io and they have a lot of great information from post to white papers to webinars and things like that. You can check them out. But we’re looking at the Israel-Hamas cyber war in the deep and dark web. Can you tell me a little bit about what you put together here and what you saw?
Ran Geva 24:29
Yeah, so we’re all shocked when the war started and immediately wanted to help and to see how we can help our intelligence to find clues about abductees and find if there’s videos, images, information being shared online Telegram channels, Discord, online communities that can shed some light about people who got abducted. Any piece of information was still important to cross-reference. Because we needed Israel diligence and still are any information that can tell us the whereabouts or identification information about someone who either got killed or abducted. So quite quickly, we work with multiple intelligence organizations in Israel, who got access. And we work hard to map and find telegram channels, and any other channels that you can find that there were discussions by the Palestinians in a reading, posting images, that it was quite popular to wind down as time went by about what happened. And it disappeared formation and private phone that took pictures and uploaded and bragged about what they did and who they captured. And that helped immensely to identify and recognize and what happened. And sometimes the status of the people that either were brutally murdered or abducted. So close to home. We talked about IP, and we talked to breaches, and we were able to help our country as fast as we could, um, people work very hard. Just on helping, searching again, analyzing the text, and see how you can search how you can find how we can pinpoint this type of information, and which are the channels that are more popular. And of course, it’s dynamic, evolving. And so we are still on helping on that effort. So we’re very, very happy about it.
Jeremy Weisz 27:15
This image was taken from Lunar. What are we looking at here?
Ran Geva 27:24
Yeah, you can see that the mentions around the war around Israel around what happened with the Hamas, kind of flatline and then October sevens.
Jeremy Weisz 27:40
I mean, you see flatline, but like, so some of these is text messages and comments about Israel, Hamas. There’s still I mean, the flatlines 5,000, daily mentions that doesn’t seem insignificant on a normal basis.
Ran Geva 27:56
Yeah, people don’t like Israel. And there are these charts do talk about Israel and Hamas in the Palestinians on a daily basis. Of course, there’s chatter all the time. The Hamas organization, Israel is now unknown organizations. And the conflict has been going on for ages. Just the jump and in what happened in number of posts and discussions. And people were cheering and very, very happy about what happened. So there was a search. So that can end up the graph that is showing on the search.
Jeremy Weisz 28:30
Yeah, I mean, this is all disturbing. But what was disturbing to me is the flatline, is still 5,000 daily mentions about this, right?
Ran Geva 28:41
Yeah, but it wasn’t about, it was Israel and Hamas and Rondout and not about of course, we couldn’t have known, unfortunately, beforehand all what intelligence organization missed. Yeah, actually, the Hamas terrorist did not know until 4 a.m. that this is going to happen. Now, a lot is going to be said, about what happened here about how they manage to surprise Israel, with almost 3,000 terrorists coming into Israel and no one knew about it. How do you keep a secret that 3,000 people know about? Right? I think that was an assumption by the intelligence officers, that there’s no way that so many people will know something that we don’t thing is that they did not know about it. Until it actually happened because there was so many drills that they did to kind of make sure that we cover up there is another we’ll take care of people exactly what happened. They made all those rules. They got us to have a concept that it’s never gonna happen because it was ongoing so long even. And it’s so unimaginable that even if we saw them coming to the border, if we saw them coming with rocks to the border, we said, okay, that’s another drill, showing the strangers muscles and they care about more that people now and they’re not, the change of ways. And just like, hours, two hours before it happened, those 3000 people got the message this time is not drill. Go, go, go. So that’s kind of how it went under the radar.
Jeremy Weisz 30:34
Yeah, and if we look at this, if we saw something, let’s say we see a spike two days before something then this could actually detect in real-time, something we don’t know what it is, but something and some of you have to look at this closely to maybe see oh, there’s a spike at 3 a.m., what’s going on that type of thing?
Ran Geva 30:57
No, I think what happened here. So these are public channels, these are public telegram channels. So what we see here are basically civilians, could be also terrorists themselves posting stuff, but it’s not internal chatter of the Hamas. It’s public channels. So the spiky Sea is by private people posting pictures that they took. So the civilians did not know about it, even the terrorists did not know about it. So it’s not internal information. This is kind of asked open source intelligence. So there was no way out of open source intelligence to know about what’s going to happen.
Jeremy Weisz 31:38
Yeah. And so we see some of these things, psychological warfare, we see escalation of online extreme discourse and misinformation, increased cyber warfare, etc. Anything else on this that we should point out?
Ran Geva 31:57
We keep on saying that we keep on seeing this information being spread out to stir, it’s a parallel warfare, basically discouraging there’s two fights it’s kind of the front fight and this force global, being a Jew these days is frightening. There’s a lot of misinformation. And this is true information of course, it’s tragic what happens in Gaza truly is however, there’s a lot of forces trying to set an agenda that is going to a powerful nation we are determined to lose, people always cheer for the underdog. Unfortunately, even if the underdog is a terrorist and murderer, rapist, terrorists, unfortunately, it gets cheered on by too many people, which is extremely disappointing. Feels like it is only an excuse to show your real self as anti-Semite it’s frightening. We talked before about going abroad. And nobody wants to be like you really feel like Israel is our last resort as where we are protected. Takes back as a nation. Nobody likes to be we all grew up with the stories of the Holocaust. And nobody wants to go there. You think it’s extremely event that happened to our grandparents. Never again, and then you see there’s an opportunity and it could happen again. If given the chance. And you see globally you see what’s going on you see whoa, I’m not sure I’m gonna go out now. And it was probably always this way so it’s an opportunity and we kind of pessimistic gonna stand.
Jeremy Weisz 32:09
How do people combat like we have, escalation of online extreme discourse and misinformation. How do companies or how do we combat misinformation?
Ran Geva 34:43
So fortunately, there are so many good civilians. I can’t say anything about our government that is doing something good. They’re not. One of the things that we’re really hearing as well is that you they were bad before they’re persistent and being bad governance but our brothers our civilians are doing the work that they should have been doing so they’re very surprising Heroes right that there’s a blog. A Lucky Nun I think that’s her name. She had a from not mistaken wine tasting company or she did tours for tourists. And she found herself starting kind of a movement and convincing people to retweet and fly and getting to high-profile accounts of Twitter. And then more people joined her. And she got started with Hamas is ISIS trend comparing, sticking to a common ground that many people know everyone knew ISIS, not many people know Hamas.
Jeremy Weisz 36:11
What’s the site called? So because checkout.
Ran Geva 36:13
Oh, no, it’s on X, on Twitter. It’s just a private person who started battling and started replying to this information or replying to agendas with the truth asking people to retweet and she’s now kind of a powerhouse of changing the climate is to fight.
Jeremy Weisz 36:42
Who are some of those people that you follow or that people are following so that to combat misinformation? So what was the person on Twitter?
Ran Geva 36:52
A Lucky Nun. There are probably people that are working to answer manually and trying to get on people to reply and try to change the narrative.
Jeremy Weisz 37:17
Any other people that you recommend others checkout in that regards?
Ran Geva 37:23
So Allah, I’ll put on our chat, just put in the chat open, a live feeds, should we do something? This is doing a lot of work basically night and day. And she has a partner with her. Yeah. Donna Guts. I think she’s her partner. And they both do fight the narrative but also work to help civilians to help causes. As you can see, she’s like, that’s all her Twitter typefaces for you. So if the time front page will say something, which is kind of backwards, she will go ahead and fix it for you. And he will reply and have her follow retweet and get their attention. And so she’s working very hard. And Davey does so. So there’s a bunch of people that have dedicated their life. Like one day, they need one thing the second day, they’re doing another thing. Yeah, it’s a lost cause. I unfortunately, this is something that we have to do. But it’s very, very, very difficult to fight too many, but we can sit idle.
Jeremy Weisz 39:11
Yeah, it’s tough because I’m seeing these conversations go. I’m sure you are on social media, all channels. And is someone really going to convince someone else? I don’t know, maybe? I don’t know. I mean, it’s still worth speaking what the truth is, but yeah, the sad part is, I don’t know if anyone’s going to be convinced on the other side. Maybe that’s just my skepticism. I don’t know.
Ran Geva 39:42
No, I think it’s, yeah, when I was younger, I was we argumentative our time. These days. I just don’t, I’m too lazy. I don’t even try. Because many times do people want to listen to themselves. And also on social media on just an echo chamber, you are right, you are preaching to the choir, you feel good about getting the likes and shares from people that are like-minded. So getting and changing minds is difficult. Unfortunately, or fortunately, we have a lot of graphic information that cannot change or prune stuff, which is so difficult to use and opening LinkedIn and Twitter and even the main newspapers in Israel. I personally, I can’t, I can’t read, I can’t watch anymore. It breaks who you are. It removes your faith in humanity. But it’s kind of the most powerful weapon you have now to show who you’re dealing with, right? So to use it or not use it. But it’s so crazy that things can happen. And so you have you want to go to work, you want to continue with your life. And you then you drive to work. And you listen to the radio, and then you hear a story that you didn’t intend to here and then kind of ruins their day, or you come to work kind of contemplating life. And they have to keep on going and lead a company and be strong for everyone. Which is difficult. I think.
Jeremy Weisz 40:01
What did you do as a leader when the terror attacks happened? And how did you address your company and stuff?
Ran Geva 42:01
I think like everyone watched the news couldn’t move from the screen. Disbelief just trying to grasp what is happening and keeps on happening for hours and hours. I think that’s one of the crazy things on top of everything that this took went on for hours. And you could on live TV here the pleads of people that later on died. And you kept up see yourself where is the police? Where’s the army? How come people are crying for help for hours, and hours and no one’s coming? That’s, I think the betrayal people are feeling. We thought we were protected. So something horrible is happening. It’s on TV, dark Hara he see what’s going on. Everyone sees what’s going on. And you see news reporter breaking because their friends who are sending them help us, we are stuck. We need help. Why isn’t anyone coming so you sit there and you like everything can rely on breaks. So that’s kind of me and many other people. Right? And then you have reality in real life and I would kind of alarm staying at that disbelief but I have a company’s run I have a responsibility for my employees, their families and make sure that we keep on operating. So I had to call, I and my co-founder Guy Mor multiple calls about what’s going to happen and cannot decide the course that’s going to and not have no choice route that we will come to work the next day. And speak with people hear them out. The first two days. I think people were out of it. Like they didn’t answer the phone but it was like wow, but they can barely really operate. And my second guy went down to eat lunch and everything was closed even though there was no one telling anyone to close but people did not want to leave home. People were just mourning or in shock. The next day was a bit better but still like again Sarah just like it feels like nothing had closed the roads are clear no traffic jams. And that is take your, with your managers who have difficult times as well. And you tell them guys, you guys want to be managers, and now it’s your time to shine. So you have to get through, you have to pull on you need to get these together to survive this. So I think it’s something that is difficult, but you have to, and sometimes I spoke with my EO friends that it’s a disconnect, because sometimes everything is okay, you’re functioning, and then you drive home and you start crying. Just out of nowhere, and so strange and you didn’t feel anything, you didn’t feel like you’re sad, or the whole day, and all of a sudden, was breaking. Yeah. And this is kind of our internal or our psyche is strange. Can you don’t listen to yourself? And something crazy is going on internally. And you don’t listen to it. And all of a sudden, you explodes and boom, I’m crying and deep sadness taking over you. Yeah, I think it’s still there, it’s still, it’s getting better, of course, and people are our office is people are coming and working. And people found out that working is good. And kind of taking off not watching the news. And started, you know, going to the routine is important, it actually helps, because otherwise you go crazy. So, we are kind of back. There are some problems with that, as no schools or schools are starting to get back to normal. So but you have parents who have nothing to do with their little children, so they have to work from home and know, productivity is going down a bit. It’s getting better these days, it’s been a month since. But it was a tough month, it still is. But we are on track. On top of that horror story 50% of our development force is in Army Reserve. And so we are now working on growing a new muscle of hiring outsource employees, which I’ve always thought it will be a good idea to have. So we’re kind of using this opportunity to learn how to scale using outsource. So that’s good, in a sense. We don’t expect to see our employees back soon, many of them and I had one employee who went into Gaza. And I was really, really scared for him. And today, so I message him on Friday. How are you? And when you go inside to take, of course your phone so there’s one V and it received the message I just want to bring him to say hey, what’s up when he gets back in today, I got that. Hey, what’s up? So it’s like, yeah, so if juggling reality and reality, instant realities.
Jeremy Weisz 48:35
And I can’t even imagine, you know, thanks for sharing your story, your journey, businesses is tough enough. And now you add all of these other things to the mix. It just almost not comprehensible, you know. So thanks for pushing forward. Thanks for what you do as a company for Israel and also for some of the work you’re doing in an intelligence perspective with Webz.io So I want to just encourage people check out Webz.io to learn more. And if you know someone that can use them, send them this interview send them the website and Ran, I just want to be the first one to thank you. Thanks for sharing your story.
Ran Geva 49:34
Thank you very much.
