Vijay Lakamraju

While IT security is traditionally focused on compliance and securing enterprise systems such as laptops and servers, product cybersecurity is focused on the cybersecurity posture of products that a company/enterprise designs, manufactures and sells. These products are most often installed in customers’ premises and often do not connect back to the enterprise mother ship. It is important that such products are not only designed with security in mind by leveraging defense-in-depth approaches, but should also consider the entire lifecycle of the product, as often vulnerabilities are discovered after the product is released. An enterprise product cybersecurity enterprise program is focused on strengthening the cyber security resiliency of legacy, current as well as go-forward products through the adoption of comprehensive cyber security processes, best practices and continuous discipline health improvement. I will provide an overview of the different aspects of such an enterprise program, key insights and challenges developing such a programs and trends in the product cybersecurity industry.

Biography:

Dr. Vijay Lakamraju is the Product Cybersecurity Officer for Otis Elevator Company, where he leads the enterprise strategy for the cybersecurity of all Otis products, namely elevators, escalators, moving walkways and its related sub-systems and services. Prior to his current position, Dr. Lakamraju was a Principle Engineer and Program Segment Lead at the Research Center of United Technologies Corporation. He got his Ph.D. in Computer Systems Engineering from University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Between 2002 and 2006, he, along with his PhD advisors, co-founded a start-up specializing in low-power and secure microprocessor designs.

Dr. Lakamraju has contributed to several cyber security standards and has been a speaker at several conferences. He has more than 10 patents to his credit and 12+ academic publications. Outside of work, he is also a coach to local FIRST Robotics teams.