Leaders in the security industry understand the importance of forming trusted relationships, not only internally but also with third-party entities. Leaders who demonstrate a go-getter attitude and the willingness to learn with the team have great potential to drive result-oriented solutions for clients. With a unique combination of business acumen and deep technical knowledge, Arun K. Singh paves the path to success in cybersecurity at Ilantus Technologies.
Arun is the Chief Executive Officer and Board Member at Ilantus Technologies. He is a solution-centric leader who motivates others to achieve their targets with his passionate and vibrant leadership skills. His unique ability to bring the best out of the team is backed by his sound knowledge of the security domain and a strong work ethic. To gain insights into his successful methodologies, we at CIO LOOK interviewed Arun focusing on his professional journey.
Below are the highlights of the interview:
Brief our audience about your journey as a business leader until your current position at Ilantus Technologies. What challenges have you had to overcome to reach where you are today?
I started my career in cybersecurity as a cryptographer and security research professional and later moved on to building and driving cybersecurity businesses for multiple organizations. After my post-graduation from the Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur, India, I joined Infosys Technologies and focused on creating innovative security solutions for healthcare industries. That was the time when regulations such as HIPAA, PCI, and Sarbanes Oxley were catching up in the market. This trend was recognized by Wipro Technologies and they invited me to build a global Enterprise security business. My journey with Wipro started with a very small group of 40 cybersecurity professionals which scaled up to a large number of professionals with a strong global footprint and services covering end-to-end cybersecurity domain from risk & compliance to application security, data protection, infrastructure security, security operations and con vergence of logical & physical security. We won multiple awards for productized service offerings and established a global security brand. The key challenge during my tenure at Wipro was to develop a team of skilled professionals in each geo who can interact with the client on the end-to-end cybersecurity domain to position all the services with equal strength.
My success at Wipro was noticed by Accenture, and I was invited to join their global cybersecurity group as Managing Director. Though I was hired to drive security consulting and implementation business however soon after my joining, I realized the potential to build a managed security business aligned with Accenture’s Infrastructure and Application Outsourcing business.
This led to the development of a business case and obtaining funding approved from the Steering Committee to start a new group focused on Managed Security Operations. As the global leader for Managed Security business, I had to pass through many challenges e.g. defining the service catalog aligned with the market, baselining delivery processes, defining guide rails, set up sales and delivery capabilities from scratch, and continuously engage senior management by demonstrating customer success stories. It was an extremely rich experience to build the global business by setting up security operation centers in different parts of the world, acquiring clients in each region, demonstrating profitable growth, and getting high recognition from analyst groups.
After Accenture, I joined EY LLP as Americas Risk Advisory leader and Partner to build the “Cybersecurity-as-a-Service (CaaS)” business. I started working with EY Global team to develop a business case and obtained funding from EY’s Advisory Investment Committee (AIC) for this new business. My work in volved selecting cutting-edge technologies to implement SaaS solutions covering Digital Identity, Data Protection, Threat Detection & Response, and Threat exposure management. These innovative solutions were developed leveraging Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Robotic Process Automation, Threat Intelligence, and Security Analytics tools. We established an advanced center for cybersecurity in USA to run CaaS operations. Setting up the next generation, fully automated, and cloud delivered cybersecurity services for EY’s enterprise clients was a great challenge to solve at EY. My quest to do something more challenging prompted me to move out of EY and join Ilantus Technologies as the Chief Executive Officer. Ilantus had been in cybersecurity domain since past two decades and provided right platform for me.
Ilantus has a startup culture, and my past experiences of working with large organizations came in handy in going through a transformation cycle to align Ilantus’ growth trajectory with the market. Currently, I am focused on driving an accelerated growth for Ilantus and taking this company to next level.
Enlighten us on how Ilantus have made an impact in the (respective) niche through security expertise in the market?
As a professional services organization, Ilantus have implemented 3rd party IAM products for clients globally for many years. That experience made us realize that the IAM vendors are offering only fragments of the IAM solution, and clients are burdened with not only buying 5 to 7 different products to solve their IAM requirements but also spent significant time and effort in integrating them. This led to the creation of Compact Identity, which is a comprehensive solution that con verges Access Management, Identity Governance and Administration, Identity Analytics, and Privileged Access Management capabilities in a single platform and is backed by an intelligent risk engine and robust identity analytics. It is cloud-native, risk-aware, easy to use, and built on the Zero-trust framework to provide Identity centric holistic cybersecurity to secure clients and their digital transformation journey.
Leading analysts agree that con verged IAM is the future of IAM, especially in a covid influenced business landscape where Work from Home is the new normal, and Compact Identity from Ilantus continues to be a leader in this space recognized consistently for its innovative features and simplicity. Compact Identity is the only solution in the market that is a true con verged IAM solution. With three patents, this product is in the 3rd generation of maturity and enjoys a diverse client base across Retail, Healthcare, Education, Manufacturing, Telecom, BFSI, and Government sectors.
Where do you envision yourself to be in the long run, and what are your future goals for Ilantus Technologies?
In the long run, I envision myself working closely with the investment firms, serving as advisory board leader for cybersecurity companies and growing business at Ilantus. The future goals for Ilantus is to further enhance its identity analytics engine to integrate it with the latest cybersecurity solutions in the organization and create more use cases for Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning to leverage these solutions deeply. In the next five years, we see Ilantus as a strong global brand and a major player in the Con verged IAM space.