VENKAT BALAKRISHNAN

What is your name?

Venkat Balakrishnan

What company do you work for?

TAL Services Limited (a Dai-ichi Life Group Company)

What is your position in the company?

Chief Information Security Officer (CISO)

How long have you worked in the industry?

20+ years

What do you do and in what circumstances would I come to you for something?

I’m passionate about cyber security and love solving unsolved problems, solving existing problems in an accelerated manner, incremental innovation to keep up with changes across all dimensions, and being pragmatic to deliver real value and benefits.

Equally, I enjoy contributing to building young cyber talent and creating future cyber leaders, and spend considerable time outside work in mentoring and sponsoring upcoming talents and leaders.

I’m always available for a coffee or drink to brainstorm any idea in cyber, to discuss any innovation concepts, unorthodox approach to circumvent traditional cyber challenges, and career guidance in cyber.

How do you start and finish your work-day?

The day starts with a catch up of cyber headlines, 15 mins exercise, visualising the meetings / key points / stakeholders in a good shower, and kick-off work without any meetings for the first hour (I try).

The day finishes with a wrap of closure activities such as emails for 45 minutes, meeting someone within the cyber community after leaving work when I go to city or early dinner with family if at home, listening to Audible books or podcasts on the way back home or whilst doing the kids activity run, 30 minutes with family before kids go to bed, catching up with personal ‘to do’ list, reading cyber related stuff from my ‘to read’ list, and locking the plan for next day before heading to bed.

What do you do at work on a daily basis?

Most of time, work feels like jack of all trades and sometimes stretched as an octopus with hundred arms. For example, managing cyber risk in a dynamically and rapidly changing threat environment involves zooming in/out of technical details and sliding left/right across various cyber domains. Also, it mandates constant strengthening of relationship across technology and business to ensure cyber is considered in their decisions, clearing of roadblocks/challenges for the team and shielding them from distractions/unimportant activities so they can focus on their delivery and outcomes, influencing key business stakeholders in Risk / Legal / P&C / Finance to establish shared objectives for the broader benefit, consistently demystifying the cyber jargons and keeping the internal audience connected with the emerging cyber risks in a palatable manner, meeting with external peers or cyber professionals to learn more about new ways of solving a problem and contributing towards the community, and acknowledging that all these are not possible without my team and allocating time for them through ‘work with the CISO initiative’.

What is the best thing about your job?

The job makes you humble regardless how good you are in cyber, because you are as good as yesterday in the ever changing threat environment. It makes you understand your strengths and weaknesses, accept the newbie cyber enthusiasts who are ready to offer free cyber lessons, listen to cyber critics who one-dimensionally thrash the industry peers that had a cyber incident under their umbrella, acknowledge that you are making cyber decisions with the best available information at a point in time and with a degree of unknown factors, balancing cyber risk vs business benefit at every move during the course of day and living with the consequent passive stress. It has makes me to look at the job from a philosophical viewpoint and got me to focus on items that I can control with a clear call on what I cannot control. By product of the experience is that it has made me calmer in my personal life and enabled me to see life with a risk balanced perspective.

What’s a mistake you made early on in your career, and what did you learn from it?

Very early in my career, I made few mistakes and glad that I made those mistakes, which ended up influencing the rest of my career. I was enjoying security through my system programming skills in C/C++ and ended up with two opportunities, one as a System Programmer and another as a Security Researcher. One of my mentors gave me a guidance to chase my heart and not the money, when the System Programmer was double the salary than the Security Researcher. Glad that I ended up chasing my heart instead of money.

Similarly, I was presented with two opportunities in the next step, where one gave a broader experience in security with a salary lower than the another that presented higher salary but deep with narrow focus on a security vendor product. Again, I’m glad that I didn’t run after the market demand for the vendor product that raised the stakes, rather for a broader experience that contributed to who I am.

Describe yourself in three words?

Focused, adaptive and understanding

What do you consider your greatest personal achievement?

Able to sponsor the education of few underprivileged kids in India for past 20 years

What is the most important lesson that life has taught you?

I’ve an opportunity to influence the future and become a better person than I am today Is there a quote that motivates you? “The only constant in the universe is change”, based on the Greek Philosopher, Heraclitus.