Building a Venture Scale Cyber Security Startup in the Age of AI: Alon Jackson, CEO of Astrix Security (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: For both of these functions—the product definition side and the iterative product definition side, as well as the actual scenario mapping on the engineering side, are you using off-the-shelf tools, or using stuff that have you built yourselves? What does the infrastructure look like?

Alon Jackson: It’s not this or that. We’re actually using many different tools from third-party vendors and internally built ones.

Sramana Mitra: What is your number one tool?

Alon Jackson: I know that Cursor is a big one for R&D. More interestingly, our VP of Operations kicked off an AI Center of Excellence for us. We have delegates from each department join, and on a monthly basis, everyone shares what they’re using, how they’re doing it, and what processes they’re going to automate. There’s knowledge sharing and tool sharing between departments. We’ve enabled the entire company on prompt engineering and how to be a modern employee in the software world.

But I think it goes beyond just technology—it comes down to culture and processes.

Sramana Mitra: Prompt engineering is something that you have to learn. How do you do this kind of iterative product definition using Cursor? That’s something you have to learn. It’s not something you’re born with.

Alon Jackson: Absolutely. Enabling the team is a big thing. It comes down to culture. I expect people in the company to be surprised when someone does something manually—or the way we used to do it in 2024. So, we’re really baking this into our day-to-day work.

We expect ourselves to be more productive, more precise, and more creative using these tools as part of our ongoing functions.

Sramana Mitra: What is your philosophical position, given the fact that you are fundamentally an engineering person? How do you read this proliferation of vibe coding? Cursor is an example of that kind of coding. Are you doing these mock-ups as product definition and then redesigning the whole system in a proper engineering manner? Or is there continuity? How do you interface between vibe-coded systems versus really robust, scalable systems?

Alon Jackson: I think it goes beyond just vibe coding. You can think of vibe everything. You want to perform an action that used to take a lot of time, and now an AI tool can generate something—for example, a new song—instead of you trying to find the right words. So, you iterate and work with the tool.

Going down to the bottom line, IBM had a quote 50 years ago—“A computer cannot be held accountable for making decisions”. Obviously, they meant agents. An AI agent cannot be held accountable for breaking production or delivering insecure code. You cannot sue it; it’s not a legal entity you can hold responsible.

So having a human in the loop, having an owner—similar to a car or a pet that has an owner—is essential. That owner is human accountable for the actions and for managing the agent, similar to how we manage employees. You can think of agents today as interns. You trust them up to a specific level, but then you want to have proper oversight and approvals.

That’s how we currently look at vibe coding. I do think that will change. We’re going to trust these systems more as they prove themselves and as we feel more comfortable with them. The amount of oversight we need to put on top of these systems will diminish as they improve.

Today, vibe coding is amazing and helps you jumpstart. But in the end, you need someone to read through it, approve it, and ensure it makes sense from all aspects—functionality, security, and so on.

Sramana Mitra: But you have a very complex system. This isn’t a little app that does a few things. It’s not just a wrapper on top of ChatGPT. Your system has to be architected by a human, not with vibe coding, right?

Alon Jackson: Any AI tool can help the architect who looks at the complete picture. But it’s my firm belief that you still need a human to understand the architecture and approve it.

However, that person must use these tools to help them think differently, more creatively, and implement ideas faster. It applies to the architect as well.

This segment is part 6 in the series : Building a Venture Scale Cyber Security Startup in the Age of AI: Alon Jackson, CEO of Astrix Security
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