I’ve worked in security for 25 years, much of it as a CISO in the semiconductor industry.
Most of my career has been inside companies where a serious breach could have sunk the business: semiconductor firms, whose design files are among the most targeted IP anywhere, and security product companies, where our own security had to be good enough to sell.
Today. I’m CISO at Altera, the semiconductor company, leading security through its separation from Intel. This is my second time in the seat.
How I got here. I first ran security at Altera from 2008 to 2016, through Intel's $16.7 billion acquisition. I was CISO at Marvell Technology from 2021 to 2023, reporting to the CEO and the board. In between I was CISO at Balbix and at Cavirin, and I founded Presence Global, a privacy and child online safety platform. We built it, launched it and sold it. Before all of that: McKinsey, and Microsoft.
In my experience, security programs rarely fail because the strategy was wrong. They fail because nobody could carry it out. So the first thing I ask about any plan is whether we can staff it, pay for it, and still defend it in a year when the budget goes down.
Make the safe way the easy way. Banning something usually just moves it somewhere you can’t see. The controls I’ve seen work were the ones that made the safe route easier than the risky one.
Watch what you allow. If you permit something, make sure you can see it happening. Otherwise you have no way of knowing whether the program works.
Explain it so the board can follow. A board won’t fund a program it doesn’t understand. Putting technical risk into terms an audit committee can act on is a core part of the job.
I also run two of my own ventures, independent of my work there: Claracon AI, a cybersecurity and AI advisory firm, and AstorX, a platform for enterprise tender teams.
The systems companies are deploying now act on their own, hold their own credentials, and can reach more data than any single employee. What they can do matters less than whether we can trust them.
That changes where things go wrong. An AI agent with tool access is a privileged account that nobody has reviewed. An approval process that relied on recognizing a familiar face stopped working once a live video call could be faked.
None of this is new. These are the old problems of identity and governance, arriving faster than most security programs can keep up with. That gap is what I work on.
I’ve built security programs at Altera (twice), Marvell, Balbix and Cavirin. Most of the job is writing a plan the company can actually staff and fund, and explaining risk in a way the board can act on.
In semiconductors, security does not stop at the company. Chips end up in data centers, networks and defense systems. Hardware and supply chain security is where company risk becomes national risk.
AI is changing who the attackers are and how fast they move. Deepfakes now fool people who are paying attention, and AI agents are being handed access that nobody has reviewed. Companies need rules for AI from the day they start using it, not after something goes wrong.
I build with AI as well as defend against it. AstorX runs AI on enterprise documents inside each customer's own cloud, so their data stays under their control.
I don’t think higher salaries alone will close the security talent gap. A lot of it starts much earlier, in schools and universities. I spend time with students and young security professionals in India, talking about what the work is really like, how to get into it, and how to stay safe online.
I founded Presence Global to protect children’s personal information online. The mentoring comes from the same place.
Most of my career has been in semiconductor and security product companies, almost all of it in Silicon Valley.
I have built security programs, briefed boards and run incident reviews at Altera, Marvell, Balbix and Cavirin. I led security due diligence for Intel's $16.7 billion acquisition of Altera, and now I am leading Altera's security through its separation from Intel. I founded Presence Global in privacy and child online safety and sold it. I started at Microsoft and McKinsey.
Today I put that experience into my work at Altera, and into writing and speaking.
Leading security through Altera's separation from Intel. Moving off shared infrastructure, systems and identity, and building an independent program for the standalone company. My second time in the seat.
A cybersecurity and AI advisory firm in San Jose. Advisory work for enterprise clients on security programs, AI governance and technology risk.
An AI platform for enterprise tender teams. It runs in each customer's own cloud, so their data stays under their control.
Company-wide security across product engineering, hardware, multi-cloud and the supply chain, for operations in more than 50 countries. Regular reporting to the CEO and the board.
A privacy and child online safety platform that helped people and parents find, remove and protect their personal information online. Funded, launched on iOS and Android, and sold.
CISO inside two security product companies, where the security program is both the internal function and part of what the company sells.
Built and led the security program, briefed the CEO and the board, and covered factory, manufacturing and supply chain security. Led security due diligence for Intel's $16.7 billion acquisition.
Due diligence and IT compliance at McKinsey. Before that, technical lead for Active Directory and identity at Microsoft.
Looking through a closer lens at my life, I wonder whether living in different cities and countries has shaped the way I look at technology.
Mumbai taught me how to read a crowd. To notice movement, and to understand what is happening around me without anyone explaining it.
In Bihar, I learned to notice the quieter routines: people, and small changes in the way things worked.
Delhi pushed me to pay more attention to people. Conversations, behavior, relationships, and all the things that happen between the lines.
And the U.S. gave me the experience of looking at many of those things from the outside. Once you enter a new environment, you notice things you might have stopped seeing elsewhere. Over the years I have noticed how differently people behave, how differently systems work, and how much can exist beneath what we see on the surface.
The small details. The patterns. The things that do not quite add up. Over time, I think that became an instinct: to look a little closer, and to question what seems obvious.
It has shaped the way I approach technology. Whether I am looking at AI or at security, I am interested in what sits beneath the obvious, in the small gaps, behaviors, and assumptions that tell you far more about a system than its documentation does.
Maybe that is what moving across places gave me. An eye for detail.