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The People Behind It

Built by operators, not theorists.

50+ combined years across global telecoms, government intelligence, and enterprise security at scale. We've seen the inside of these systems — and built 1stProtect to close the gaps others leave open.

Kervin Pillay

Kervin Pillay

Chief Executive Officer

LinkedIn
25 Years in TelecomsHarvard Business SchoolCisco CTO
Executive Business Leadership & Entrepreneurship — Harvard Business School

Kervin Pillay is a specialist in telecommunications with 25 years of experience across fixed, mobile, and IP-based technology, with a focus on defining and evangelizing new methodologies in telecoms.

Kervin served as Automation CTO in the Mobility and Automation Business unit of Cisco from November 2020 to October 2025. Previously, he served as the CTO of Internet Solutions — the largest internet service provider in Africa, a division of NTT Inc. — from October 2016 to December 2019, and prior to that as a consultant at Oracle AcmePacket, where he was at the forefront of bringing VoIP security to the Fortune 500.

At Internet Solutions, Kervin was responsible for operations and security across 13 countries in Africa, covering physical infrastructure such as datacenters, undersea cable systems, terrestrial fibre, and all IP and session services to provide services to enterprises and consumers across the globe.

Kervin has built and operated datacenters across four continents over the last 25 years. Having seen the evolution of data centers supporting telephony, mobile data, cloud, cybersecurity, and now AI, he is well positioned to navigate the intricacies of successfully building a next-generation technology company.

Rafel Ivgi

Rafel Ivgi

Co-Founder & Chief Technology Officer

30 Years in CybersecurityUnit 8200 · Israel Defense PrizePublished Security Researcher

Rafel Ivgi is a coder, hacker, and published cybersecurity expert with nearly 30 years in the field — spanning endpoint and data security, cloud, and now AI.

At 16, he published 77 articles on software vulnerabilities affecting major vendors, including Microsoft. He went on to serve in Unit 8200, Israel's elite intelligence division, where he was awarded the Israel Defense Prize.

He later held senior roles at leading cybersecurity companies — Forcepoint, Symantec, CrowdStrike, SentinelOne, and Cybereason — most recently leading a global team of more than 230.

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