Akshay Bhaskaran — Security Engineer
I started my career with a Bachelors in Information Technology from India. Couple networking-based courses along with a strong introduction and final year project on cryptography got my interest spiked in Cybersecurity. So, I came to Boston to get a Masters from Northeastern University majoring in Information Assurance and Cybersecurity. Here, I'd the opportunity to explore, and learn various pillars of security such as network security, system security, identity and access management, digital forensics, applied cryptography, penetration testing, risk management, and much more. A sneak peek into the industry to see how this field functions was given to me through couple of internships - one at a healthcare firm dealing with security architecture reviews, threat modeling, and penetration testing, and the other at a media company dealing with incidents, performing malware analysis and much more. Post graduation, I'd landed up in my first security engineer role with Visa Inc., Here, I was dealing with developing and maintaining cryptographic components/agents that performs encryption, tokenization etc. Also was responsible for performing data security architecture reviews to understand, and evaluate the sensitive data elements from its origin until destination to make sure it is secured in all of its three states. After spending around 4 years in this company, I switched to PayPal, a similar company in the FinTech space. Here, I'm now a part of the cryptography engineering team developing and exposing cryptographic REST APIs that'd be consumed by other applications to protect their sensitive data elements. Areas of expertise: 1. [Cryptography and data protection/data security]: encryption/tokenization methodologies and implementation 2. [HSM and PKI]: key life cycle management, certificate management, and overall hands-on knowledge on the PKI ecosystem 3. [Application Security]: security architecture reviews, threat modeling (STRIDE), and the ability to use tools to perform in-depth SAST/DAST kind of scans to identify insecure code 4. [Programming]: ability to understand, debug and develop security components/utilities/frameworks using the following languages - Java, Python, Shell script 5. [Web Technologies/Micro Services]: hands-on knowledge developing web-applications that consumes/exposes REST APIs to perform various different crypto operations using some widely used frameworks 6. [Databases]: ability to perform CRUD operations on various flavors of DB such as Oracle, MySQL, MSSQL, DB2, and Mongo using their respective connectors
Stackforce AI infers this person is a Fintech Security Engineer with extensive experience in cryptography and application security.
Location: Austin, Texas, United States
Experience: 8 yrs 11 mos
Skills
- Cryptography And Data Protection/data Security
- Application Security
- Information Security
Career Highlights
- Expertise in cryptography and data protection methodologies.
- Led significant projects in key management and security architecture.
- Strong background in application security and threat modeling.
Work Experience
Apple
Senior Security Engineer (2 yrs 3 mos)
PayPal
Security Engineer (Member of Technical Staff 1), Cryptography Engineering (2 yrs 9 mos)
Visa
Senior Cybersecurity Engineer, Data Protection and Security Architecture (1 yr 2 mos)
Cybersecurity Engineer, Data Protection and Security Architecture (3 yrs 10 mos)
GNS Healthcare
Capstone Research Intern (3 mos)
NBCUniversal Media, LLC
Information Security Analyst Intern (3 mos)
Education
Master's degree at Northeastern University
Bachelor of Technology (B.Tech.) at SASTRA University
