Nir Zuk, founder and CTO, of Palo Alto Networks declares Cybersecurity Person of the Year
The editors at Cybercrime Magazine named Nir
Zuk, founder and Chief Technology Officer and board member at Palo Alto
Networks “Cybersecurity Person of the Year” for his outstanding contributions
to the industry in 2025.
On Aug. 18 of this year, PAN announced that Zuk
has retired after more than 20 years of contributing to the company's success.
He founded PAN in 2005, pioneering the next-generation firewall and
revolutionizing the cybersecurity industry.
Zuk said he could step away because the
original blueprint he drew 20 years earlier of a single, unified cybersecurity
platform spanning every major defensive category an enterprise might need, was
finally complete, reports Calcalist, Israel's premier daily financial newspaper
and online media platform.
PAN’s founder can retire in peace after his
company announced its intention to acquire CyberArk for approximately $25
billion, which added to a long list of acquisitions in Israel (and globally),
joining the likes of Talon Cyber Security and Dig Security, which were acquired
for a combined $1 billion in 2023, according to Calcalist.
“Nir is a legend in cybersecurity, and his
contributions are forever etched in our history books,” said PAN’s Chairman and
CEO Nikesh Arora.
In a PAN blog post late last year, Zuk
predicted that “The cybersecurity industry will experience tectonic shifts in
2025, unlike any we’ve seen in years past. These historic transformations will
see the convergence of AI, data and platform unification, altogether changing
how both cybersecurity defenders and attackers will operate and innovate.” In
retrospect, Zuk was spot-on.
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