When Joe Iantosca arrived at Cyera as CFO, his first hire wasn’t an accountant or an FP&A professional. It was a data engineer.
For Iantosca, the decision reflected a conviction formed over years of working inside technology companies: Finance cannot help steer a business without reliable access to the information driving it.
That conviction first took shape at Palantir, where he witnessed the impact of centralizing financial and operational data. At BetterCloud, where his responsibilities eventually expanded into the COO role, he carried the lesson further, connecting product, marketing, and business information into a common analytical foundation.
At Cyera, that experience has become especially relevant.
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The five-year-old cybersecurity company operates across 15 countries, employs approximately 2,000 people, and has completed seven acquisitions. Its ambition is to build a comprehensive AI security platform that helps enterprises adopt artificial intelligence while protecting sensitive data.
For Iantosca, financing that expansion involves more than allocating capital. It means understanding how customers are acquired, how products reach the market, and how new offerings become commercially successful.
His operating background has also made him unusually comfortable entering customer conversations and examining the friction that can slow enterprise sales.
Meanwhile, the company’s investment in centralized data is helping finance pursue AI-driven automation, including potentially significant changes to the month-end close.
The challenge ahead is balancing experimentation with financial discipline. Cyera encourages employees to test new ideas and move quickly, but major investments require evidence.
Iantosca’s priorities reflect that balance: adaptability, discipline, and the successful commercialization of new products.
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CFOTL: What does Cyera provide, who are its customers, and where’s the opportunity?
Iantosca: Cyera is an AI security platform, and we are building the next-generation cybersecurity company. We’re focused on making sure that CISOs, chief information security officers, can confidently say yes to the benefits of AI and really trust this agentic enterprise that we’re finding ourselves in rapidly.
The origins of the business go back to data security. We are the only company in the world that is able to provide visibility across the entire data estate from a security perspective. We’ve used that data advantage to bring many new products to market.
CFOTL: How has the capital Cyera has attracted shaped the company’s growth priorities?
Iantosca: The thing about all the fundraising that you see is that it’s really just recognition of the opportunity ahead. The funding, in the simplest way, is building and buying more products and market expansion.
CFOTL: What part of Cyera’s revenue model matters most today?
Iantosca: New customer acquisition is the primary one. We’re fortunate that we have super high NPS and wonderful retention. But we’re still, as a five-year-old company, very focused on bringing new customers into the Cyera ecosystem.
CFOTL: How does your operating experience shape your approach to Cyera’s revenue engine?
Iantosca: Early on in my journey, I think where it really shaped my approach is getting into the deals. I understood that winning these customers is the most important thing to the business at this exact point in time. What’s going on in the deals? Where is the friction? How can we move resources around to make sure that the team has everything they need to win?
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CFOTL: Inside Cyera’s finance organization, where is AI making the biggest difference?
Iantosca: I think where we feel the most tangible impact is on those mundane tasks that used to take forever: reconciliations, bringing data together from many different sources. I’m seeing the ability to automate with AI complete parts of the month-end close over the next three to six months.
CFOTL: What are your priorities for the coming twelve months?
Iantosca: One, staying adaptable. Two is discipline. In a company like Cyera, where we’re growing quickly, things are going well, it’s important in my role to make sure that we have the financial discipline to grow into a generational company. And then three is commercialization of all the new products that we’re bringing to market.