Avalor Team Member Profile: Aziz Kapadia, Principal Solutions Engineer

Share a bit about your background and experience. 

I’ve worked for every size of  business, from small start-ups to global enterprises. I’ve also been a customer and a seller. I spent quite a bit of time in global IT operations, and solution and application delivery, for global media company CBS. After that, I decided to enter the security industry and have been there pretty much since the conception of risk-based vulnerability management.  

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What drove you to the field of cybersecurity?

Today enterprise security is really a combination of security, IT, and business. I believe if a technology can’t support the business, it’s useless. You have to have technology that solves business challenges at the end of the day, whether it’s in security or IT. 

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One of the main reasons I came to work in cybersecurity is because my biggest pain point for a long time has been the lack of rapport between IT, security, and the business. At CBS I was in the center of all of that.  I always felt like we were challenged by security to be able to deliver. They caused a lot of delays. So I wanted to go into security and help build business processes into cybersecurity to counter that. 

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Describe your role at Avalor. What are you responsible for doing? 

I’m a sales engineer, which is a great fit because I like sales, I like product and I like engineering. As an SE you can do all three. In addition, I was lucky enough to be the first field employee at Avalor. So I have been able to do a bit of everything and it’s a lot of fun. We all work as a team, titles don’t really matter—it’s all about what we have to do to win.

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You spend a lot of time in front of customers and potential customers. What’s it like when you present Avalor’s solution?

Midsize to large enterprises often come to us after they’ve tried everything else and have had to settle for “good enough” when it comes to managing risk. They’ve kind of seen it all, so they are understandably skeptical. But when they see what Avalor can do, they really can’t believe it, because it’s the first time they are seeing a solution that covers the entire spectrum of data when identifying and prioritizing vulnerabilities. And, one that operationalizes the findings, in order to create tickets, escalate to the SOC and so on. We also work with customers who thought they would have to build this solution themselves, in-house. But they know that even if they could, it would take years and millions of dollars and they realize that they really need a solution like ours now.

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What are some of the changes you’re seeing in the security space right now?

Industry developments like the new SEC requirements for security representation at the board level and data governance regulations are elevating the position (and expectations) of the CISO, from head of security to a senior business executive. So when they see redundancy in security solutions, or a product that is not required in order to achieve business outcomes, it’s getting cut. However, the area that is growing is exactly the space that Avalor is in.  

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When I interview candidates for our team, they often ask me about macroeconomic conditions and about the product and the leadership team at Avalor. My answer is always the same: If you want to build software that really solves problems, it’s not the technology that will get you there, it’s the team that will get you there at the end of the day. People that know how to execute, have the backend experience, the right culture and mindset↞—that’s what gets you the win at the end of the day. 

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What is the team and culture like at Avalor?

Everyone who works here is genuine.  And that is critical not only to the culture but to our business.  The culture at Avalor actually helps us win deals, because people can sense when you care about your team, and when you’re truly customer-centric. They can tell from the way we work together as a team that we will support them and their team. 

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If someone asked you why they should work at Avalor, what would you say?

It’s pretty simple. If the culture is right, the product will be right and the customer will be happy.  And when you have a solution like we do—which solves a problem no one has ever solved before—we’re unstoppable.  We have both volume and velocity on our side.  We appeal to IT, to SecOps, the CIO, and the CISO. If you care about enterprise observability and operationalization, which everyone does, then you appeal to everyone.  

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If you’re looking to join an amazing team of people who inspire and drive each other every day, check out our open roles here.

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