When Chaim Mazal got his first computer at the age of eight, a career in cybersecurity was the furthest thing from his mind. He taught himself to code and by the time he was 12 years old Mazal was captivated by the opportunities of the future of technology.

“I had found Internet Relay Chat (IRC) and I kind of stumbled across the hacker community,” he says. “I became very enamored with the possibilities and the potentiality of what could be. It was like the wild west then.”

Mazal dove headfirst into computers, learning everything he could with school taking a back seat.

“My parents thought I was crazy because other kids my age were out riding bikes or playing football and I was hanging out with my internet friends in chat rooms,” Mazal recalls.

He recalls having a conversation with his father after being caught skipping school so he could sit home and build a program in Visual Basic that he was obsessed with.

“He asked what I was doing and I said ‘I promise you, I learn more here every day, working on these projects, speaking with these people, than I could ever imagine to learn at school’,” Mazal remembers. “He said he appreciated being passionate about something, but it's not one or the other. He said 'If you want to put your efforts and energy into this than I support you, but it has to be both. You have to do well in school, you have to continue to go to school, you have to be engaged.’”

I think one of my proudest accomplishments is not only my continued growth but being able to level up the people around me and really have a strong, lasting impact.

Fast forward to today where Mazal currently serves as the Chief Security Officer at Gigamon, where he oversees global security, information technology, network operations, governance, risk, compliance, internal business systems, as well as the security of Gigamon product offerings.

Previously, Mazal was the Senior Vice President of Technology and CISO at Kandji. He has also built engineering first security programs at several multi-billion-dollar SaaS startups including ActiveCampaign, Uptake, and Avant. The Saas community is something Mazal continues to be passionate about and is a lifetime member and contributor to the OWASP Foundation and currently sits on several advisory boards, including Cloudflare, Gitlab and Lacework.

“It's been a pretty exciting ride from a little kid getting a computer and figuring out how to break stuff to helping the largest corporations in the world be able to keep their responsibility and requirements of keeping their customer data safe,” Mazal says. “When I think about it out loud, holistically, I’m thinking ‘wow’, and I have to pinch myself. I can't even believe I'm here.”

Throughout his career, Mazal has made it a goal to not only strengthen the security postures of the organizations he leads but also shape the broader cybersecurity industry by influencing best practices, driving innovation and mentoring the next generation of security professionals.

“I think one of my proudest accomplishments is not only my continued growth but being able to level up the people around me and really have a strong, lasting impact,” he says.

When looking back on his career, Mazal shows tremendous gratitude towards the security community as a whole.

“I can't imagine my life without all of the support, collaboration and friendships that the community has provided me over the last 15 years,” he says. “Just being able to be part of the community when it was fledgling and there wasn't really an industry built around it, and then watching everyone be able to grow and the $100 billion industry that's materialized around it is really special. I don't think that exists in a lot of other places, in technology, in the corporate world, and so just all the friendships, all the kindness, all of the engagement… without that, I wouldn't be doing what I'm doing. I'm extremely grateful for everything that's been afforded to me.”