Kapil Assudani, CISO at Edwards Lifesciences, shares how he was one payment away from getting kicked out of his Masters program, being resilient and resourceful, building credibility, and finding ways to reduce the attack surface.

About Kapil:

Kapil Assudani, with over 20 years of experience in information security, currently holds the position of Senior Vice President and Chief Information Security Officer at Edwards Lifesciences. His tenure at Edwards, spanning over six years, has responsibilities beyond the typical enterprise security scope of a CISO, as it includes IoT Medical Device Security and Manufacturing Plant security on a global scale.

Kapil’s leadership philosophy is built on three key principles. Firstly, he believes in building a team of passionate and good-hearted individuals, providing them with innovative tools, and then allowing them to operate independently. Secondly, he emphasizes presenting security problem statements backed by facts and data, simplifying them to a level where a business leader can independently make risk decisions. Lastly, he focuses on building trusted relationships across the entire employee base, fostering candid conversations and driving an execution-focused culture.

His extensive experience covers all facets of information security, including leading security incident detection and response, ethical hacking teams, and security architecture and strategy programs. He has also been instrumental in building a global cybersecurity program at Edwards from the ground up. Kapil’s diverse industry experience spans consulting and corporate roles across Fortune 100 companies in accounting, finance, healthcare, and technology. Over the last decade, he has intentionally focused his career on healthcare companies, finding the work purposeful and passionately aligned with a noble mission. Kapil holds a Masters in Computer Science and has been a speaker at multiple conferences, further solidifying his expertise in the field

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