Susanne Senoff recalls a time early in her security career when a former colleague would insist that meetings take place in his office. But the office was papered with lewd materials.
HR let it stand, she recalled, because he was so good. “That would never happen now,” said Senoff, now CISO at Conga.
Her point wasn't that the problem was solved. Senoff was speaking alongside two founders, Shahar Bahat of Pluto Security and Yael Fraiman of Predict Security, who described a different barrier: fewer overt acts and more assumptions.
Fraiman said women interviewing at startups still worry about whether to disclose that they have children. Her friends debate how much to share about their private lives: “Should I share that I’m married?”
Bahat described the funding version. Before she began raising capital, she recalled how someone once advised her that she would be better off “showing up without a ring.” In our conversation, she said she ignored the advice: “I did raise money with a ring because I don’t want it to be a matter.”
The companies they are building address different aspects of workplace security. Bahat’s Pluto Security helps businesses monitor and secure the AI tools, agents, and applications employees use and build. It recently announced $42 million in total funding, $34 million of which was a Series A round in October.
Fraiman’s Predict Security focuses on insider risk, analyzing activity across company data, applications, and AI tools to distinguish ordinary work from potentially harmful behavior.
Both are portfolio companies of AlphaDrive, a venture capital firm founded by Yaron Elad and Elik Etzion focused on cybersecurity and AI. Its AlphaDrive Wisdom network brings practicing CISOs into investment evaluation and company development, where members contribute personal capital and advise founders on products, customer needs, and commercial strategy.
Senoff co-leads that community alongside her role at Conga, connecting the three participants through both investment and practitioner support.
My first three-guest studio panel on The Spiro Circle brought together women from different generations and professional backgrounds, with overlapping experiences of assumptions about their gender.
What the data shows
Israeli data suggest the drop-off of women in top roles across leadership positions happens after entry, not before it. Women represent about 34% of Startup Nation employees, a share that has remained largely unchanged for three decades.
For younger cohorts, it is slightly more equal. Women aged 25-34 are 39.5% of employees, against 31.5% at ages 45-54. In cybersecurity, data put women at 26.3% of non-managerial employees, 15.5% of senior executives, and 5.1% of CEOs at companies founded from 2013 through 2024.
In other words, women are already underrepresented before entering the industry, but their representation is lower still in senior leadership.
The times are changing
“We’ve been resilient,” said Senoff, adding that female CISOs have “just ignored our gender, in a way.” A better approach was asking whether they were good at the job.
To her board, the question of gender doesn’t come up. Senoff said her board’s concern was how secure the company was, rather than her gender. But for younger women, it does, and she mentors them. “We just want to be celebrated for just being good at our jobs, not because we’re a woman who’s good at our jobs.”
Senoff offered a card-game metaphor: being a woman is one card, and it’s an Ace. It can be an advantage or hindrance since it can claim both high and low values.
Bahat expressed a similar pragmatism: “As a founder, you use whatever you have.” Before starting Pluto, she said that hearing other women discuss both the challenges and advantages of building companies helped her see a clear path and pursue it in her own way.
For founders, investors, and buyers, the practical question is where assumptions bite: interviews, fundraising, or sales - all moments with financial consequences. But the shift they describe, from visible conduct to unspoken assumptions, is harder to measure and, on their account, harder to see.
