Profile
Ashish was drawn into the world of cybersecurity back in the day when his personal Hotmail account was hacked. This event led him to discovering the ins and outs of cybersecurity in order to keep himself, family, and friends safe. He’s never looked back. The early years of his professional life kept him busy as an Analyst, IT Services Consultant, and Computer Forensics tutor. As the Technical Director at Versent for 6 years, Ashish acquired vast experience with supporting enterprise businesses to think and act like start-ups through supporting their migration into cloud technologies.
Unlike roads supported with traffic signals, speed limits, and road signs to remind one of the rules and warn of unexpected road conditions, the cyber security does not come with that level of insight and readily available information. If not given the proper guidance on how to navigate successfully into the cloud space, businesses can suffer unintended financial impact, delays or road blocks on projects, loss of customer confidence, damaged reputation, and negative impact to the bottom line. This is why Ashish has chosen the field of cloud security to make his mark. He believes in holding loosely to strong opinions, or one will find themselves stuck and frustrated as technology continues to evolve at a staggering rate. Cloud and DevOps are continuing to challenge the cyber security community with automation and speed, leaving those caught flat-footed, or not open-minded to new possibilities, facing numerous challenges.
Ashish brings his years of experience to the classroom through sharing case studies of helping dozens of businesses transition to cloud, challenging conventional processes, and offering outside-the-box thinking on how to approach a modern, secure environment. He wants to help students understand real-world scenarios that will force a leader to choose one path over another, and the impending consequences of either, sharing his own personal successes and failures for others to learn from and leave the course more prepared.
In 2020, Ashish started the Cloud Security Podcast, and within less than 2 years has nearly 10,000 subscribers and very high ratings, proving his value add to the community. He’s been featured on The Cyber Wire, The Secure Developer, We Hack Purple, Infosec Journeys, Hacker Valley Studio, BarCode Podcast, Security Unfiltered, and more.
Ashish holds a bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, and a master’s degree in Information Security from Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology. He’s a regular public speaker at devsecops and cloud security conferences, holds multiple CA and AWS certifications, and has been a volunteer with OWASP Melbourne and BSides Melbourne. Outside of technology, Ashish enjoys men’s fashion, calisthenics, and is an entrepreneur at heart.
ADDITIONAL CONTRIBUTIONS FROM ASHISH