Wias Issa Email & Phone Number

Wias Issa is a Chief Executive Officer at Ubiq Security, Inc. based in San Diego, California, United States, North America. After a few years in finance, I began my cybersecurity career as a security engineer at Symantec (in a windowless SOC), helping Fortune 500s identify threats. Things were simpler then — no APTs, cybercriminals, or ransomware, and only a few vendors across three main segments: firewall, IDS, and endpoint. Nearly a decade later, I joined Mandiant, then a relatively unknown firm with ~50 employees, working closely with the FBI to help enterprises respond to severe cyber incidents. Our motto was simple yet profound: find evil, solve crime. My time at Mandiant remains special — a unique opportunity to be on the frontline of every major breach. I led an elite incident response team in the USA, moved to Asia to build and run a similar team & business from scratch, and eventually (simultaneously) took over the entire Mandiant Japan business. You’ll often hear that one of the most crucial skills in cybersecurity is pattern recognition (spoiler alert: it’s true). During my time at Mandiant, I saw many patterns, but one stuck with me. In every major breach, a customer executive would ask their CISO, “I thought the database was encrypted, so how did attackers steal our data?” It was always answered in the same, nuanced way: “Well… database encryption doesn’t protect data in a running system. It’s just a compliance checkbox, only useful when a system is off.” You can imagine the reaction to that. Sadly, the uselessness of storage-based encryption is one of the worst kept secrets in cybersecurity. That was the spark that led to building Ubiq Security. Our mission is to help CISOs reduce data theft risk by enabling encryption, tokenization, and masking of sensitive data at the individual record and file level, and integrating with Identity Providers for user-level context and fine-grained, Zero Trust access control. This makes it exponentially harder for attackers to access data - even if they compromise admin credentials. Today, I lead Ubiq’s global team, partnering with enterprises across industries to protect everything from financial data to healthcare records. We deliver an elegant, easy-to-implement solution that makes data security simple and effective without being burdensome. Outside of cybersecurity, I enjoy traveling, snowboarding, and watching F1. If you’re looking for insights on cybersecurity, leading teams, building and growing a business, or recommendations on where to eat in NYC or Tokyo, I’d love to connect. Let’s chat about how we can make security work for your organization, not against it — or at least some good food!