Eyal Benishti

Growing Up Coding in Israel

He told Authority Magazine: I grew up in Israel, I got my first PC when I was 7 and fell in love in it immediately, I started writing my first line of code in Basic when I was 8 and I have been programming and building software since then. On the Delve podcast in 2022, its host recounted that his father bought him a book on BASIC programming and that he spent much of his free time at a computer shop around the corner from home, later building his own machines. By his teens he was online. He told Safety Detectives in 2019: By age 13, I was spending hours on the dial-up Internet in messaging boards on Bulletin Board Systems (BBS).

Army Service and a Degree at Bar-Ilan

He served almost four years in the Israeli army, as most young Israelis must. A famous case from those years drew him toward security: While I was in the army service there was a big story about The Analyzer (Ehud) hacking into the Pentagon. I was very curious to learn about hacking and how it was done. After the army he earned a bachelor's degree in computer science and mathematics from Bar-Ilan University in Ramat Gan, Israel, and took his first job as a Java developer.

From Developer to Malware Researcher

He spent his early career in research and development at Comverse and Amdocs, two telecommunications software companies, and as a technical lead on security products at Imperva. Then he went back to what he cared about most. At one point in my career as a software developer and team/tech lead, I decided I wanted to go back to my real passion and took a few positions in security research and reverse engineering.

At Radware, a security company, he studied the networks of hijacked computers that criminals use to flood websites with traffic. He spent long hours reading assembly code to learn how each piece of malware got in, hid itself and talked to its operators. He said on Delve that he enjoyed it: I like puzzles at the end of the day it's like solving puzzle with 1000 pieces. He also came to believe that attackers would keep their lead, because they will always always be one step ahead of us. One find set his direction: I was the first to find a new type of malware that was targeting a small but famous country in the EU. The malware file was sent over email and right then I knew I wanted to help fix the email phishing problem.

Founding IRONSCALES

Coworkers kept forwarding him emails and asking if they were phishing. He would reply with the signs he looked for, and after a while, he said on Delve, the questions stopped and colleagues began sending him phishing emails they had caught on their own. That convinced him that people with no security training could learn to spot a phish and could warn security teams about attacks that filters missed. Safety Detectives recounts that this is why he started IRONSCALES. He gave the year himself: That led me to start IRONSCALES in 2014.

He also saw that strong email protection was expensive and needed full-time staff to run, so only large companies could afford it. He told Atlanta Business Radio in 2022 that he set out to build the most powerfully simple email and messaging security solution. IRONSCALES works inside each mailbox, where older tools sat at the network gateway. In 2026 he told Techstrong TV that the company took email security from the gateway level down to the mailbox level, looking at the intent of a message as well as its links and files. He sees phishing as a human and machine problem and therefore we need a human and machine solution.

He has said the move from engineer to chief executive was the hardest part. I was a techy, and I knew nothing about business, fund raising, financials, sales, marketing etc. His answer was to get used to discomfort: You have to almost get addicted to that feeling of trying scary things. He also credits the team: If you want to go fast, go alone; if you want to go far, go together.

Moving to Atlanta

IRONSCALES hired its first American staff in Atlanta, and he visited them several times. When he considered moving his family to build the company's headquarters in the United States, the choice was quick. Atlanta was the easy first choice for me. Great talent, great people, great weather, great hub. IRONSCALES now has offices in Atlanta and Tel Aviv, and he said in 2026 that it protects more than 18,000 customers.

He calls AI a tool and warns that it does not remove the need to train people. He told Techstrong TV that phishing now arrives over many channels at once: It's not just an email problem. Asked what movement he would start, he said: Let more people into cyber positions, give people a chance with entry level position and help to close the skills shortage gap.