Global experts, CISOs, founders to converge at Accel Cybersecurity Summit in Bengaluru on July 25

By PTI

Prominent founders, global cybersecurity experts and chief information security officers (CISOs) of large enterprises as well as tech unicorns will gather at the Accel Cybersecurity Summit scheduled to be held in Bengaluru on July 25.
The mega summit will provide a platform for startups to showcase their cybersecurity innovations and pitch to a select group of CISOs from both big enterprises and tech unicorns, including PhonePe, Groww, Cred, and Flipkart, according to a release by Accel.

“Accel is set to host India’s largest Cybersecurity Summit on July 25, 2024, in Bengaluru,” the global venture capital firm said. To evangelise the early-stage cybersecurity startup ecosystem in India, the event will bring together security operators, CISOs and notable founders from across the world.

The summit comes at a time India’s cybersecurity landscape is witnessing remarkable growth, and demand for products and services is rising at a fast clip. According to a report by the Data Security Council of India, the market reached approximately USD 6 billion in 2023, clocking a CAGR (compounded annual growth rate) of over 30 per cent from 2019 to 2023. The products segment alone grew by more than 3.5X, reaching close to USD 3.7 billion in 2023 from USD 1 billion in 2019.”India’s cybersecurity landscape is maturing quickly. With the exponential growth of large SaaS (software as a service) and consumer companies in India, security teams have become highly skilled atcombating increasing threat surfaces,” said Prayank Swaroop, partner at Accel. Swaroop said Accel has funded over 50 cybersecurity companies globally, many of which have Indian-origin founders.

“There are significant opportunities for the founders in India to build the next generation of global cybersecurity companies focusing on areas like AI (artificial intelligence) in cybersecurity, application security, and security operations,” he added. The upcoming summit will have four distinct knowledge tracks tailored to the varied interests of participants, and a pavilion where startups and data security teams can showcase their products. The application security’ track will cover topics like setting up a high-quality AppSec programme, which involves practices and tools to protect applications from threats and vulnerabilities during development and deployment, and automating tasks across the AppSec stack.  The security operations’ track will look at how to leverage Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) and Security Orchestration, Automation, and Response (SOAR) for automating security operations and explore strategies for scaling security operations as organisations grow. ‘AI in security’ will explore the role of AI in enhancing the AppSec stack and large language model (LLM) security. And finally, the `founders in security’ track will offer deep insights into best practices for scaling go-to-market strategies and selling to security teams and CISOs. The lineup of speakers for the summit includes Ajit Sancheti, general manager of Logscale at CrowdStrike; Ankur Bhargava, head of product security at PhonePe; Himanshu Das, CISO at Cred; Ross Haleliuk, founder of Venture in Security; Jossef Harush, head of supply chain security at Checkmarx; Anthony Belfiore, chief strategy officer at Wiz and Prajal Kulkarni, CISO at Groww.

Also in the list are Ashwath Kumar, principal security engineer at Razorpay; Ruchir Patwa, co-founder of Sydelabs; Ansh Patnaik, chief product officer of Cycognito; Anand Prakash, founder of Pingsafe; Raghuveer Kancherla, co-founder of Sprinto; and Sprouts founder Avinash Nagla. The summit, organised by Accel, is led by a committee that includes Prayank Swaroop, Akshat Jain (co-founder and CTO at Cyware), Ankita Gupta (co-founder and CEO at Akto), Vandana Verma (senior developer advocate at Snyk), and Sandesh Anand (co-founder at Seezo), the release said.

Accel has been operating in India since 2008, and its investments include marquee companies such as BookMyShow, Flipkart, Freshworks, Cure.fit, Mensa Brands, Myntra, Swiggy, Urban Company and Zetwerk.