CIO&Leader, in collaboration with Sify and Fortinet, recently organized roundtables focused on the essential interplay between online safety and workplace connectivity. Dive into the insights that have emerged.
The three-city roundtable, conducted by CIO&Leader, Sify, and Fortinet, convened some of the most prominent IT leaders and CIOs. The aim was to deliberate and discuss challenges and strategies for achieving a secure online environment while ensuring user-friendly customer and employee experiences. The overarching theme revolved around balancing robust security measures and user convenience, highlighting the importance of enhancing user awareness and knowledge.
The discussions at the Bangalore and Mumbai editions focused on enabling secure and reliable connectivity for the future workplace, while the Kolkata edition honed in on building a secure ecosystem, emphasizing the delicate equilibrium between convenience and safety online. Notable speakers from diverse domains enriched these discussions with their valuable insights.
Bangalore and Mumbai editions:
The sessions deliberated on the multifaceted challenges organizations face as they navigate the evolving landscape of remote work and digital connectivity. One major concern centers around enhancing remote employees’ user experience and productivity. Achieving optimal application performance and reducing latency pose significant hurdles, demanding strategic solutions to ensure seamless workflow irrespective of geographical locations.
Key highlights and discussion points covered:
- Strategies for enhancing user experience and productivity for remote employees by optimizing application performance and reducing latency.
- Best practices and implementing solutions that enable organizations to scale and secure SD-WAN operations without compromising performance.
- Exploring the integration of Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) with SD-WAN to ensure robust and secure access for a hybrid workforce.
- The most effective methods to detect new attacks are automatically responding and rectifying unauthorized configuration changes.
Speakers for the Bangalore and Mumbai editions included:
Bengaluru
- Mr. Shivanand BK, Vice President & EDA Group Head, Synopsys
- Mr. Blasius Victor Rodrigues, Manager IT, Synopsys
- Mr. Veerendra Kumar, Manager – ICT, We Work
- Mr. Karthigeyan S, Director IT, Whatfix Private Limited
- Mr. Venkatesh PS, Director, Cognizant Technology Solutions
- Mr. Rajesh Agrawal, Manager – IT, Wipro Limited
- Mr. Sushilkumar Nahar, GM, Happiest Minds
- Mr. Asadullah Ansari, Director, Engineering SW, Harman International (India) Private Limited
- Mr. Naveen TN, Chief Technology Officer, Phoenix Systems
- Mr. Siva Sankara Reddy, Senior Director (Technical), National Informatics Centre-NIC
- Naveen Chhabra, CRO (South), Sify Technologies
- Ramanan Chidambaram, Director – Sales (SD-WAN), Fortinet
- Suresh Gummaraju, GM – Managed Network Services, Sify Technologies
The Bengaluru edition of the roundtable was attended by CIOs and IT leaders, including
Mumbai
- Ramanan Chidambaram, Director – Sales (SD-WAN), Fortinet
- Suresh Gummaraju, GM – Managed Network Services, Sify Technologies
- Rakesh Dosi, SVP & Business Head – Network Centric Services, Sify Technologies
The Mumbai edition of the roundtable was attended by CIOs and IT leaders, including:
- Piyush Mistry, Group Head Information Technology, Capital India Finance Limited
- Sudeep Maydeo, Global Head IT and CISO, EPL Limited
- Rudra Biswal, CTO, Arthan Finance Private Limited
- Melwyn Rebeiro, Director, Julius Baer Wealth Advisor Pvt Ltd
- Dhaval Pandya, Corporate CIO, Piramal Enterprises Ltd
- Santosh Gupta, Head IT, Zee Learn Ltd
- Chitranjan Kesari, CIO and IT Head, idemeum India
- Debdas Banerjee, Head IT, Sanathan Textile Limited
- Deepak Keswani, SVP – IT, Yes Bank
- Sandeep Chavan, AVP – IT, Yes Bank
- Vishal Kumar, VP – IT, Yes Bank
- Asif Shaikh, Head IT, Yes Bank
- Rohit Doke, Head IT, Infibeam Avenues Limited
- Prashant N Deshpande, CISO & CDO, Shriram Finance Limited
- Vijay Kumar, DVP IT & Security, Maximus Infoware
- Rupendra Nigam, CIO, Spykar
- Ashok Chitimilla, DVP- Project Delivery, Maximus Infoware
- Bhagwatiprasad Dubey, AVP Information Security, Axis Mutual Fund
Kolkata edition
The session at Kolkata discussed the current security challenges that enterprises are facing in the hybrid workplace environment and how Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) systems tackle them, limiting rapid incident response:
- The challenge around vast amounts of unaggregated security data makes it hard to see what’s happening and prioritize threats.
- IT teams need to be more staffed/undertrained due to the cybersecurity skills gap.
- The need to demonstrate compliance takes time away from threat identification and response.
The discussion centers around how Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) solutions can offer crucial threat-detection capabilities, real-time reporting, compliance tools, and long-term log analysis. These aspects enhance businesses’ security effectiveness, facilitate faster responses to threats, address suspicious behavior patterns more efficiently, and track/report compliance with industry, governmental regulations, and security standards.
Businesses can achieve rapid and comprehensive analysis by consolidating security event data from various applications and devices. Furthermore, automating repetitive tasks and delegating tasks that once necessitated expert intervention to less experienced staff significantly streamline processes. This increases operational efficiency and ensures a more agile and adaptive response to evolving cybersecurity challenges.
Speakers for the Kolkata roundtable included:
Kolkata
- Riyaz Hussain, AVP – Network Security Engineering – Delivery Cloud Managed Services, Sify Technologies
- Nihar Chakraborty, VP – Sales & COO – East & SAARC Countries, Sify Technologies
- Subramanian Udaiyappan, Director – Advanced Technologies, Fortinet
The Kolkata edition of the roundtable was attended by CIOs and IT leaders, including:
- Mr. Kripadyuti Sarkar, Group CIO, Ambuja Neotia
- Mr. Sameer Khakhar, VP – Information Security, Bandhan Bank
- Mr. Dinesh Naskar, Head – IT, Century Plyboards India
- Mr. Tamal Nag, GM – IT, Ddev Plastiks Industries
- Mr. Surajit Banerjee, Head IT, Emami Paper Mills Limited
- Mr. Biswajit Bag, Head – IT Infra & Security, Exide Industries
- Mr. Arindam Hari, Head-IT, Gainwell Commosales Pvt. Ltd
- Mr. Sanjeev Sinha, President – IT & Digitization, India Power Corporation Limited
- Mr. Dipan Sengupta, Head – IT, PCBL
- Mr. Sanjay Prasad, CIO, RP-SG CESC Power Group
- Mr. Atanu Pramanic, COO & VP – IT, RPSG Ventures
- Mr. Sourav Das, Group – Chief of Digital & IT, Rupa & Company
- Mr. Deepak Sengupta, CIO, Shyam Metalics Group
- Mr. Prakash Tripathi, CIO, Shyam Steel Industries
- Mr. Rajesh Dutta, CIO, Usha Martin
As the roundtables concluded, the insights shared by industry experts and practitioners provide a valuable foundation for shaping resilient, secure, and user-centric IT strategies.