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In this interview, I am joined by MineOS Co-Founder and CEO Gal Ringel who shares his insights about MineOS’ innovative data privacy platform and its journey. Under Ringel’s leadership, the company is revolutionizing the data compliance field to help companies establish robust data privacy practices and build trust with consumers.
MineOS excels in data discovery and classification, employing innovative methods developed during its B2C phase. It can discover nearly all of an organization’s data systems, double the capability of traditional methods.
1. Thank you so much for doing this interview. To kick things off, can you please tell me a little bit about yourself and your career background?
Thank you so much for having me. I’m Gal Ringel, the CEO of MineOS, a data privacy platform that’s innovating the data compliance sphere so companies set themselves up for data privacy success and build trust with consumers.
As for my background, I grew up obsessed with computers, you know I’m honestly a computer nerd, so that really guided my passion for technology and the internet. My work background before I began working with startups began in the Israeli Army and Cybersecurity, which is actually where I met one of Mine’s other co-founders, Gal Golan.
2. What led you to the establishment of MineOS?
Gal and I bonded over our love of computers and we spent so much time talking about how to make the internet better and dissecting issues like data privacy. Initially, we wanted to empower people and help them act on the data rights the GDPR gave citizens, so we built Mine as a B2C platform.
As time went on and we began helping millions of people, companies started coming to us looking for more efficient ways to handle the Data Subject Requests they were getting from people, and that got us thinking about where true change could come from.
Helping individuals was great, but it was on a smaller scale. Giving companies better tools and solutions to build the best data privacy practices would have a much bigger impact in fixing some of the privacy problems that have hurt the internet.
3. Can you talk about the roles of your Co-Founders? How did each of your strengths, qualities, and expertise complement in forming the MineOS team?
So we have 3 co-founders, me, Gal, and Kobi Nissan, another friend of ours.
Kobi has worked for international companies and some really forward-thinking VCs, so his product vision and product development skills help drive the innovation that makes MineOS so unique.
Gal Golan is so, so talented. He’s the tech whiz behind everything we do, helping to build it and make that vision a reality.
As the CEO, I see myself as the shepherd of the company, being able to jump in and help out anywhere I’m needed with a flexible skillset.
4. How does MineOS differ from other privacy management solutions in the market?
I truly believe our product and all the innovation behind it are leagues ahead of other privacy solutions. And I think our B2C roots really help with that.
Our UI is clean and smooth, and because compliance is traditionally an onerous field where a lot of employees would have trouble using the tools, we’ve purposefully done the opposite, designing things to be very visual and easy to use and understand for anyone.
When it comes to the engine of the platform, data discovery, and classification, we excel there. We use methods nobody else uses because we had years on the B2C side to build those out, and now we can discover nearly all of an organization’s data systems, about double what traditional methods discover.
From there, being able to put together a complete data map quickly, we have tons of automation and AI suggestions to really round out privacy tasks and help people understand the full overview of their organization’s data structure.
5. Could you provide some examples of how MineOS has positively impacted businesses or individuals in terms of privacy management and data control?
Innovating data mapping technology to the point where companies can put one together in a few days as opposed to the weeks or months it takes to compile a data map manually contributes so much to businesses, but I think where the impact is even more obvious is Data Subject Requests, DSRs.
DSRs are coming from real people, people who want to minimize their digital footprint and be more responsible with their data, and with MineOS we’ve enabled businesses to process DSRs and help individuals out much faster and easier than they could before. That’s really changed the business world’s perspective on DSRs. They aren’t considered a pain anymore, because they’re easier to handle with the right tools.
6. Data breaches and privacy violations are still increasingly prevalent in today’s digital world. How does MineOS stay ahead of evolving threats and ensure that its services remain effective and secure?
We constantly work on rounding out the platform to make it a more central data governance solution, not just a data privacy one. We’ve put cyber posture measures in, and have visualized risk matrixes so users can see which data sources might be bigger risks for data breaches or the like.
Identifying those problem sources and helping people offboard them and contain them lets companies be proactive rather than reactive to privacy threats.
7. How do you envision MineOS evolving over the next few years? Are there any upcoming features or developments that you can share?
Our roadmap has big and bright things planned, many of which came directly from customer requests. And like I said before, we’re really trying to expand the platform’s offerings to encompass more AI & data governance capabilities without losing the visual charm and ease of use that has made us so successful so far.
We have innovation at the heart of everything and some great partnerships, so we can really keep driving new fixes to some of data protection’s biggest challenges. Personally, improvements to things like our system’s own AI, since AI governance is something so many people are interested in, are top of mind to remove more of the guesswork that has traditionally made compliance tasks take such a long time. No matter what changes we make though, we’re committed to keeping the MineOS experience a pleasant one.