Chat with Abhi Abhi Balakrishnan

Our today's guest is Sanoop Thomas, the mastermind behind Halcyon IDE and InfoSec Campus. Sanoop is here to talk about responsible disclosure and also shares his InfoSec story so far You can find him on Twitter at https://twitter.com/s4n7h0

00:09 Parul Mittal

00:18 Why Cyber Security?

01:23 Policies

01:48 SecurityCompass and focusing on a niche area - Application Security

04:00 College times

04:45 First company

05:45 Cyber Security

06:42 Deloitte and consulting

07:00 Government projects

08:55 How policies helped Parul later in the career

10:09 How having that big picture helped

11:26 Post-retirement goals

12:44 Certifications

14:24 Inspiration

17:11 Hobbies

18:37 Do your work and let everything fall in place.

I know Vandana from her OWASP Bangalore chapter days. I always associated her name with OWASP since that is how I know her. I met her briefly during OWASP's AppSec USA 2018.  She is part of various InfoSec activities and has influenced the industry in multiple ways.

Our today's guest is Jyothsna Lekkala.   I briefly met Jyothsna in the OWASP Slack channel. Finding her in Slack and sending her an interview request was a new move for me.  Jyothsna's session is the first video in this space in 2021. It feels so refreshing to be back. Plus, I loved hearing her story - it's inspirational, sweet, and has a good flow.   You would see system admins, network admin, or developers slowly switching to InfoSec. Jyothsna's story is different. She is originally from the Test Automation field. I liked one thing she said - 'You can have any special skill or background, and that will become your strength in InfoSec.' For her, it is her Mathematics background and test automation experience that make her unique. I agree with her when she says, 'InfoSec has space for all these special skills'.   Watch till the end to hear her suggestions on the books you should consider reading. I'm planning to read some of them in the coming days.

It was a pleasant experience catching up with Anant after a very long time. I asked major things about him that make him unique in the industry. There is still a lot to discuss and I had to be mindful about the time. Hopefully, Anant will come back for the second round of interviews.

Talking about his product security journey