Divakar Prayaga joins Vandana Verma for a conversation about a 17-year cybersecurity career, the transition from hands-on engineering to leadership, and the habits that help practitioners remain relevant in a rapidly changing field.
Divakar began with an internship at eIQnetworks after completing engineering without a campus placement. Network security interested him most, and he built his career from there. His first 13 years were largely connected to banking, including work with major, medium, and smaller US banks. He later gained experience in startups and enterprises spanning e-commerce, shipping, transport, logistics, and cryptocurrency.
His early learning required persistence. With fewer online resources available, he relied on training material such as CBT Nuggets, experimentation, and lessons learned on the job. That experience now informs his commitment to mentorship and sharing knowledge with the next generation.
Divakar has watched technology cycles compress from years to months or even weeks. New security products, AI capabilities, and attack techniques appear continually. His response is to preserve strong foundations while regularly exploring developments in engineering, infrastructure, analysis, and product lifecycles.
Most of his current learning is digital: blogs, podcasts, professional networks, Wikipedia for accessible introductions, and deeper references when a topic warrants investigation. He also contacts authors and learns through peer communities. Formal education remains part of that development; at the time of the interview, he was pursuing a general management program at IIM Bangalore alongside full-time work.
There is no universal template for a security program. Divakar starts with the organization’s business requirements and stakeholder expectations. IT may be a major partner, but finance, HR, legal, executive leadership, and other functions can be equally important.
Earlier in his career, he sometimes began with a set of instructions and only later discovered how much stakeholder alignment was missing. The lesson was to engage those groups early, explain the intended outcome clearly, and build a shared roadmap. He has applied that approach while developing and scaling services in security operations, vulnerability and patch management, threat intelligence, hunting, and detection.
Strong teams and mature programs do not appear overnight. They may require months or years of trust, sustained sponsorship, and cooperation across the organization.
Divakar sees the CISO as accountable for translating executive direction into a program that manages risk, addresses compliance obligations, and supports business outcomes. The role cannot succeed as an isolated, bottom-up technical effort.
A seat at the table is therefore not just something to request. Security leaders must understand the business, communicate openly, and demonstrate how their proposed work connects to organizational priorities. When evidence is incomplete, they may need to test a thesis, measure the result, and explain the return to stakeholders.
Effective networking begins with giving rather than asking what a community can provide. Divakar recommends approaching people with an open mind, sharing what one knows, and listening closely enough to discover gaps in one’s own understanding.
Practitioner communities are valuable for hands-on exchange among analysts and engineers. As responsibilities become more strategic, peer groups for CISOs and industry leaders can help compare business approaches, technologies, and sector-specific constraints. Mentors also played an important role in Divakar’s career, and he encourages people to ask for guidance rather than assume the answer will be no.
