Ex-Snapdeal CPO backs ethical hacker to monitor cyber risk

NEW DELHI: Twenty-five year-old hacker Saket Modi has got the support of Snapdeal’s former chief product officer, Anand Chandrasekaran, to build a platform that

NEW DELHI: Twenty-five year-old hacker Saket Modi has got the support of Snapdeal’s former chief product officer, Anand Chandrasekaran, to build a platform that will give CEOs and senior leaders a bird’s-eye view of how secure their companies, especially banks, are from cyber threats.

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Modi is not willing to disclose the amount, but said that it’s “not much”. However, he did agree that Chandrasekaran will help him build the product. “We needed someone like him who understands software and IT products,” Modi said.

Chandrasekaran helped Airtel build its music streaming service Wynk and Airtel Money, before joining Snapdeal. He has also headed Yahoo Search, globally.

The software that Modi’s startup, Lucideus, is building will provide a dashboard to CEOs mapping the company’s entire IT infrastructure – every single piece of hardware – and show the risk from data theft or cyber attacks.

This is critical considering some of the world’s leading CEOs have lost their jobs due to data breach – Ashley Madison’s CEO Noel Birderman, Sony Pictures’ Amy Ascal, and retail chain Target’s Gregg Steinhafel being a few examples.

Lucideus already works for many companies such as Cairn, ShopClues, Microsoft, IBM among others. It also provides cyber security services to Reserve Bank of India, DBS, Standard Chartered, Kotak Mahindra and ICICI Bank.