Sanaz Yashar is the CEO and co-founder of Zafran, based in New York City. Born in Tehran, she began her career on the offensive side of cybersecurity, later leveraging that expertise to create an innovative defense model. Yashar spent 15 years in the Israeli army’s elite intelligence unit, leading some of the world’s most complex cyber operations. She later transitioned to the private sector, holding leadership roles at Cybereason, FireEye and Mandiant (now part of Google), where she specialized in investigating Iranian, Russian and Chinese threat actors.