Nipun graduated during the recession, but found a job as a consultant which helped him gain experience quickly. He was in fact discouraged to pursue a career in information security due to his immigrant status. Nipun is now a Cyber Security Executive focused on innovation.
BIO:
Nipun Gupta is a Cyber Security Executive at a large global financial institution focusing on innovation. Armed with many years of experience helping Fortune 500 companies solve cyber risk challenges, Nipun is tasked to help his employer discover, adopt, access new cybersecurity solutions protecting against emerging threats.
In the past two years, Nipun co-founded and ran the global Cyber Innovation Ecosystem strategy at a global consulting company with a specific focus on US and Israeli startups. He offers a strong network of security executives, startup founders, and the Venture Capital community in the West Coast and abroad. Technically proficient in network and application security, Nipun is a trusted advisor for many financial service institutions, technology, and telecom companies contributing to solutions worth tens of millions of dollars. Nipun completed his Masters of Information Technology and Information Security at Carnegie Mellon University, and has been collecting industry certifications like CISSP and SABSA ever since.
Notes:


Was discouraged to go into cybersecurity due to his immigrant status


Graduated in a tough time during the 2008 recession


Discusses burnout and having to work odd hours for 6 months of the year


The show "24" was an influence in sparking the interest in information security


Shares an interesting war story where he accessed tons of files


Discusses the personality traits needed to be a consultant


Quotes

"The biggest problem security professionals will continue to face is how to bridge that gap between technical conversation and business conversation."
"You have to be technical to understand the depth of the issue, but at the same time, you need to be able to express it in business language so non-technical people can make those decisions."
"I think you have to talk in terms of risk. Every business professional [in a] large or small company understands risk because risk can put them out of business."
"While I'm an introvert when it comes to working, I'm an extrovert when it comes to expressing my work-related conversations or expressing my work-related issues."

Links:

Nipun on Twitter: https://twitter.com/nipungupta
Nipun on LinkedIN: https://www.linkedin.com/in/guptanipun/
SecurityTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBRNlyf9lURksAEnM-pyQdA
Hak5: https://hak5.org
Nullcon: https://nullcon.net
BayThreat: http://baythreat.org/
Intro Music - "Cascadia" by Trash80: https://trash80.com/#/content/133/weeklybeats-2012-week5
Outro Music - "Put This Rap Together" by Bobby Cole: https://www.audioblocks.com/stock-audio/put-this-rap-together%C2%A0-98857.html
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