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Harish Shankar, chair
Harish Shankar is a seasoned cybersecurity professional who is currently working as Director – Head of Product Vulnerability Management in Schneider Electric. In this role, he heads Schneider Electric’s PSIRT Team which is represented as SE - Corporate Product Cyber Emergency Response Team (CPCERT) where he is responsible for defining and governing product vulnerability response. Prior to this role, he handled Product Incident Response and has hands-on experience on Incident Response and Digital Forensics. He also held the positions of Information Security Officer for the APAC region in Schneider Electric. He is the winner of NEXT100 award in 2018. He is based in Bangalore, India.
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Aashish Sharma
Aashish Sharma is a cybersecurity professional with nearly 23 years of experience in security and incident response. He currently serves as a member of the Cyber Security Team at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in Berkeley, California, where he has contributed for the past fifteen years. Prior to his tenure at Berkeley Lab, Aashish worked with the security team at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, while pursuing his doctoral coursework. His research and professional interests focus on intrusion detection and incident response, areas where he has made significant contributions to the field. Aashish has authored approximately 19 papers published in prestigious security conferences, including those hosted by USENIX and ACM. He has delivered over 60 presentations, including four talks at various FIRST conferences throughout his career. As an active contributor to the cybersecurity community, he works closely with the Zeek Project and serves as a member of the Zeek Leadership Team. He holds a Bachelor's degree in Computer Engineering from Devi Ahilya University in Indore, India, and a Master's degree in Computer Science from Illinois State University.
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Archana Nandakumar
Archana is a seasoned cybersecurity leader with over 19 years of expertise spanning Security Operations Centers (SOC), cyber strategy, incident response, and incident management. For the past 14 years at Cisco, she has fortified global cyber defenses through technical leadership in incident response efforts and handling major incident management, driving customer engagement and partnering with executive leadership to align security priorities with business objectives. As a key member of NASSCOM’s FutureSkills Prime — a national digital skilling platform and a joint initiative with MeitY–NASSCOM — she plays a pivotal role in shaping India’s cybersecurity talent pipeline by defining career pathways and guiding curriculum standards, including work with C-DAC Hyderabad and AICTE’s Cybersecurity Diploma. A strong advocate for diversity, Archana has led the Cisco Women in Cybersecurity (CWiCS) India chapter, and actively mentors through WiCSP (Women in Cybersecurity & Privacy), a nonprofit community dedicated to raising cybersecurity awareness and is an experienced international speaker, having presented at FIRST TC, NASSCOM academia forums, and leading industry conferences.
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Arpit Raj
Arpit Raj is a cybersecurity professional with over 12 years of experience in the domains of electronics, information technology, and telecom, including nearly 6 years specializing in cybersecurity. He is currently working at CERT-In (Indian Computer Emergency Response Team), where he is part of the Malware Analysis and Threat Intelligence team. In his current role, he focuses on malware analysis, with a special interest in nation-state Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) groups targeting India. Additionally, he is actively involved in threat hunting, digital forensics, and supporting incident response activities.
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Logan Wilkins
Logan Wilkins currently leads a software engineering team in Cisco’s CSIRT, overseeing development programs related to incident detection and response, data management, and security metrics. Within FIRST he is the co-chair of the Metrics SIG and has served as a Candidate Sponsor for multiple groups. In addition to his experience in Cisco’s security organization, Logan has also worked in e-commerce, pharmaceutical drug discovery and was previously a high school teacher, giving countless students their first introduction to Computer Science.
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Swapneel Patnekar
Swapneel is the Chief Security researcher and CEO of Shreshta IT Technologies Pvt. Ltd. , a DNS security and threat intelligence company based in India. He is a prolific speaker and has presented at numerous international cyber crime conferences in twenty two countries. He has also delivered technical training to law enforcement agencies on countering cyber crime. He has 15 years of experience in information security. Swapneel is a Liaison Member of the Forum of Incident Responders(FIRST) and has been the co-chair of the DNS Abuse SIG at FIRST. He also has been on the board of India Internet Engineering Society(IIESoc). He also volunteers as a FIRST trainer and has most recently delivered a workshop on Fundamentals of Cyber Threat Intelligence in Kazakhstan. Since 2019, he has been an APNIC Community Trainer and has delivered technical workshops in Bhutan, Myanmar, Papua New Guinea, Bangladesh, Nepal and Sri Lanka.
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Vedant Narayan
Vedant Narayan is a Cybersecurity professional with over 12 years of experience in Information Technology, Networking, and Cybersecurity. He currently serves as Scientist D at the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In), Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), Government of India, where he leads the Cyber Incident Response (IR) team. In this role, he focuses on the identification, containment, and remediation of cybersecurity threats, with the mission of safeguarding the nation’s digital infrastructure. His areas of expertise include Digital Forensics and Incident Response (DFIR), detection of Advanced Persistent Threats (APTs), Security Audits, and Governance, Risk, and Compliance (GRC).
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Venkat Thoutam
Venkat currently serves as Business Unit Security Officer (BUSO) – Dell IT, responsible to Identify, prioritize and drive security programs to benefit the business area and help in the management of security & resiliency. He is also a Regional Security Lead for APJC. In this role he supports external and internal Dell customers and act as a single point of contact for all the Security & Resiliency requirements in the region. Venkat is a seasoned cybersecurity executive with close to 30 years of experience leading enterprise-wide security programs includes building application & data security practices providing consulting, strategy, architecture & design services aligning with business goals to enhance the security posture of the global organizations across multiple industry sector. Prior to Dell, he worked as an Application & Data Security Practice Lead and Senior Delivery Lead for Security & Risk Consulting Services at Accenture. Also as a Global Delivery Head of Enterprise Security Services at Wipro Technologies. He is certified in CISA, CISM, CCSK, SABSA-SCF and more.
