Alon Nisim Cohen

Alon Nisim Cohen was born in 1968 in Jerusalem

Cohen was born in 1968 in the Baka neighborhood of Jerusalem, the third of 4 children of Miriam and Shalom Cohen. His father, a police officer, was killed in Jericho while on duty. He finished high school at the Hebrew Gymnasium Rehavia, where he chaired the student council.

As a youth he played goalkeeper in the Hapoel Jerusalem youth teams and won the Israeli youth league title with the club in 1984. He gave up football when the IDF selected him for the Mamram computing unit, where he served for 6 years.

In 1999 he founded CyberArk with his high school friend Udi Mokady, based on his patented Network Vault invention. He was CEO until 2004 and chairman until December 2011. From 2000 he lived near Boston, where the company had its headquarters, and returned to Israel in 2009.

In 2004 he also took charge of the data storage company FilesX as chairman and acting CEO, and IBM bought it in April 2008. He later founded Intezer, nsKnox and Muvix. In 2006 he published the novel Queen of the Jews, a political thriller about the Iranian nuclear threat.

In July 2025 Palo Alto Networks announced it would acquire CyberArk for about 25 billion dollars. Cohen lives in Givatayim and has 3 children.