Jacquline Selvarajan

I started my career in July 2014 as a college recruit at Standard Chartered Bank, a global bank headquartered in the UK. I was given multiple options and selected cybersecurity, which was a frontier field at that time in the early 2000s. I initially worked in malware remediation, and during my first year, I took the ISACA CISA exam, which was typically required for people with 5 years of experience. Getting that certification early got me immediate recognition from leadership, which opened up gates for bigger roles in cyber within Standard Chartered. I progressed through multiple domains in cybersecurity and eventually became a manager for a very prominent role before moving to PwC. At PwC India, I have worked as an associate director handling large-scale clients in the cybersecurity field, including a very big project with Google and other major projects in the control testing space. One of my most significant achievements was mid-career at Standard Chartered, where we revamped and re-engineered the entire cyber risk management framework, translating cyber risks into business terms so that business leaders could understand the risks they were handling. We had to sell this to business and technology teams and get it operationalized, which brought a cultural shift in how the organization looked at cyber. I first-hand saw how a technical deployment could bring a cultural shift in an organization. Recently, I secured my work authorization to work in the US and relocated to San Francisco, where I have been wrapping down my project with a US client while looking for new opportunities. In my leadership roles over the last couple of years, I have been a manager for around 20-plus cybersecurity professionals and have mentored several people, helping them navigate through their professional challenges.