After living in the US for more than 20 years, Palo Alto Networks founder and CTO Nir Zuk has returned to live in Israel with his family in the past few months, sources inform "Globes." He is taking advantage of his company's flexible remote working policy.
Zuk graduated from the IDF 8200 intelligence unit before relocating to California in the 1990s to set up the US development office of Check Point Software Technologies Ltd. (Nasdaq: CHKP). In 1999 he left Check Point after the company halted development of the product he was working on, and asked him to return to Israel.
But Zuk remained in the US and founded a company called OneSecure, which was sold for $45 million. In 2005, he founded cybersecurity company Palo Alto Networks, which currently has a market cap of $33.5 billion, more than double that of Check Point. Zuk serves as CTO rather than CEO because he prefers to focus on development rather than overall management.
Despite being based in California, the father of five has maintained a close connection with Israel and frequently visits the country for both vacations and business. But because of the Covid-19 pandemic he has remained in Israel for an extended stay, at least until Palo Alto Networks returns to full-time office work.
Palo Alto Networks is a very active player on the Israeli market and has bought a range of startups here in recent years. Only last month the company acquired Bridgecrew for $200 million. On the basis of these acquisitions, Palo Alto Network's development center in Tel Aviv's Alon Towers has hundreds of employees.
As part of its flexible work policy, Palo Alto Networks allows employees to decide if they want to work in the office or at home and last year even gave employees a $1,000 payment to assist remote employment.
Palo Alto Networks said, "Nir Zuk continues to serve in his role in the company from Israel. Over the past year we were one of the first companies to launch Flexwork, which offers flexibility and support to employees, and provides them with the options of when and where to work - and Nir is applying it to remote working."
Published by Globes, Israel business news - en.globes.co.il - on March 16, 2021
© Copyright of Globes Publisher Itonut (1983) Ltd. 2021