Michal Lewy-Harush, CIO of Boston-based cybersecurity company Tufin, has more than fourteen years of experience building and leading global technology organizations. Formerly the CIO of on-demand mobility company Gett, Michal began her career as a help desk supporter at a company called Amdocs and worked her way up through several managerial roles to get to where she is today.
MassTLC recently had the pleasure of speaking with Michel about her incredible career, her role at Tufin, and her advice for young people in tech.
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What does Tufin do?
Tufin enables organizations to automate their security policy visibility, risk management, provisioning and compliance across their multi-vendor, hybrid environment. 
Customers gain visibility and control across their network, ensure continuous compliance with security standards and embed security enforcement into workflows and development pipelines. Our aim is to eliminate the security bottleneck and increase the business agility of your organization.
What is your role at Tufin?
My role as a CIO in Tufin is to constantly and proactively understand the business goals of the company and suggest technology and digital solutions that will enable the business to achieve its goals, enable business growth and also to ensure smooth IT employee experience.
What is exciting about it?
Tufin is the leader of a fascinating domain that constantly evolves. The security challenges that our customers are facing force us to constantly learn new technologies, innovate and re-invent ourselves. My role as a CIO is to connect the business and technologies plus interlock with all the business units in Tufin, which is my passion.
What is challenging?
The biggest challenge is on one hand, to shorten our time to market in order to keep up the pace of the constantly evolving business. On the other hand, we cannot neglect quality and experience.
What was your career path that led to your current position?
I started my path as a help desk supporter in a company called Amdocs 15 years ago. This role made me understand how much I love the combination between people, business processes and my passion for technology. It made me realize eventually that being a CIO will allow me to touch all these areas. I spent 10 years in Amdocs in several managerial roles that allowed me to learn the different content worlds in IT such as information security, information systems, networking, infrastructure, support, etc. After my journey in Amdocs I decided to pursue new challenges that will require me to get out of my comfort zone – establishing a whole new domain (information systems) from scratch in a company that grew from being a start up to a growing company. Acquiring that experience plus learning from the great leaders and colleagues I worked with through the years, allowed me to grow to my next role as a CIO, and here I am.
If you could go back and tell yourself one thing about your ladder up in tech, what would that be?
I would go back to my first managerial roles and help myself focus on the things that were within my circle of influence – it took me a few years to practice and learn.
For girls thinking about technical careers, what one piece of advice would you give them?
I would say that no matter where you are or which environment you are growing into, always seek out the things that excite you! Even if you try and fail, learn what went wrong and look forward to try again…eventually if technology is your passion, go for IT!
