Nir Zuk is Founder and CEO of Cylake, an AI-native cybersecurity platform built for organizations requiring full data sovereignty and on-premises or private cloud deployment.

Born in Rehovot, Israel in 1971, Zuk served in the elite Israeli intelligence Unit 8200, then joined Check Point Software as a principal engineer and lead developer of stateful inspection firewall technology.

Zuk is widely credited as the inventor of the Next-Generation Firewall and has consistently challenged industry orthodoxy, most recently arguing that the cloud security model has left roughly one-third of the most sensitive enterprise customers behind.

Prior to Cylake, Zuk co-founded OneSecure (sold to NetScreen for $45M), served as CTO at NetScreen (acquired by Juniper Networks for $4B), and founded Palo Alto Networks in 2005, serving as its CTO for over two decades as it grew into the world's largest standalone cybersecurity company.

Cylake launched in March 2026 with $45M in Seed funding led by Greylock, targeting governments, defense contractors, and regulated enterprises; Palo Alto Networks, Zuk's prior venture, reached a market cap exceeding $125B and serves the vast majority of the Fortune 100.