A passion that is making a change to fight against cybercrime and grow women’s empowerment.
Increasing cybersecurity threats to businesses need services like innovation, master plans, and technology. People are doing backbreaking work to provide such services to other companies to secure their sensitive data, in which most women are playing crucial roles and serving their phenomenal assistance to the relevant field with their superior abilities and magnificent skills, which are essential. These women are setting up an example for the rest of the feminine collective. This great influence could bring great ideas to the company, which will be beneficial for the future of technology as well as for the women who can showcase their talent by taking a step forward.
Aparna Achanta is the quintessence of women empowerment and a computer science enthusiast. Her strong interest in this platform and up-to-mark academics led her to choose her career path in computer science. Moving further, for her better understanding of the specific field and to start a new journey, Aparna pursued and completed her undergraduate in C.S. from GITAM University, India.
Furthermore, she moved out to Virginia. To enhance her skills and to dive into the deep world of computers and technology, Aparna completed her master’s in information systems from George Mason University.
Her concern as well as undivided attention for cybercrimes increased. She is impassioned about cybersecurity. Her perspective always supported the improvement and acting against cyber threats, which will help companies and agencies to secure their highly important private data.
Later, to demonstrate her talent, Aparna got connected to International Business Machines Corporation, IBM. This organization lends a helping hand to companies to update their operations, technology, and logic and solve their critical problems. During her career, by expertizing herself in major projects for the development of cybersecurity, she served as a team leader. Over the past decade, her aptitude and attitude played an essential key in building the client relations. Not only that, Aparna’s dedication and hard work also led to managing major projects like the development of the application for federal clients, which secures their data.
Ensuring Secure and Strategic Frameworks
Aparna is a critical thinker; before implementing an actual plan, she always analyzes and ensures that the security framework is logically coordinated with her created scheme. She set the seal by working on some essential points that should match the company’s standards. It wasn’t an easy task.
However, she was prepared and followed a strategy in which she monitored constant threats and unprotected data with instant action. Keeping many bullet points in mind, one of her main tasks is to get foremost control over minimum access to data by powerful endorsement.
Recognizing her potential to make a safe place to store data and by taking strict actions, her idea is to surround the SDLC by taking safety measures.
Utilizing the Centre of Excellence
She explored herself thoroughly. Her experience reflects her proficiency in getting things accomplished perfectly. According to Aparna, the Centre of Excellence depends on several power points. She makes sure that her industry’s objective matches her thriving target. Her transparent vision to achieve a goal and leadership takes answerability, which led to a strengthening in efficiency. Her perspective is to define smart practice, a framework that explains how an organization is led and how its members interact with others. Aparna is good at creating reusable assets, templates, and guides for similarity, which define best practices.
Making a place among numerous talented employees is not at all an easy task. Great opportunity comes with great responsibility. She was in a similar position. While managing all of these, she must make sure that she will preserve cross-functional partnerships between businesses. As a team leader, she had to check up on internal discussions. She keeps track of the documentation storeroom and continues working on consistent seminars to share insights.
No doubt her presence of mind is decent. Following Aparna, the Centre of Excellence grows well when innovation is raised. With the help of these power points, she developed Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Power Platform that help businesses build apps, automate workflows, and evaluate data. She created an administrative structure that secures data in a cloud organization. Moreover, she worked on the process of reducing costs while increasing productivity and value in the cloud organization.
Experiences that Influenced Her Approach
Reflecting on Aparna’s 10+ years in software development and cybersecurity, some crucial understandings have persuaded her method in the design of a system’s structure, components, and interaction. She understood the assignment that in this current field, whatever challenges she is facing while improving the technical architecture, will benefit her in the future. She considers this activity as a part of fresh learning, which assists her to keep balance in protection, corporation needs and serviceability.
Later, the transformation of applications to the cloud arises with new security challenges. Identity and Access Management (IAM), data encryption, a security technique that scrambles data into an incomprehensible code. Ciphertext, which can only be accessed with a secret key and multi-tenancy risks.
After concluding everything from top to bottom, Aparna implemented the Zero Trust philosophy: “Never trust, always verify.” It helps to take signals from various sources into account when making access decisions. MFA is a security principle that limits user access to only what’s needed to complete their tasks. Taking these major steps helped her in grinding her skills. This move started making her proficient in risk assessment and documentation.
Integrating Agility with Security
While some might consider strumming a unique methodology, it is more of a framework for managing processes. As a certified scrum master, it was challenging for Aparna to balance agile methodology with the powerful security system in her tasks. If we carefully observe agile methodology, it highlights elasticity. That means you must be flexible all the time. It requires fast delivery and a process in which you commit yourself to keep practicing it again and again to get a superior outcome. On the other hand, a security system has its demands. Security needs detailed planning. Setting up security systems requires an accurate examination and a practical approach to potential weaknesses. Aparna believes that if these two factors are combined correctly, it could be a deadly combination. This will facilitate us to get a speedy development as well as a safe result.
Now, how to position them together, and what should be the strategy? Her experience is reflected in her answer. As an ardent woman in the computer science platform, Aparna is a personality who believes in feasibility. Her first strategy was to examine security as soon as possible. She knows that before getting into bigger troubles, it is necessary to get into the root cause of the problem and understand the consequences. This will aid in easing weaknesses, and decent solutions can be implemented. Having a tremendous leadership quality makes her exceptional. She has a different aspect. Instead of separating the obstacle in the end, it is beneficial to have it in the development process of the project. This is the reason that she supported the shift-left strategy, where security issues are addressed in the initial stage of planning and designing.
We are now approaching the second strategy, where Aparna uses an automated security testing key. The more dedicated she was to work, the more thoughtful she was about her team. To avoid unnecessary time wastage, she applied this strategy to address the problems quickly so that teams could work consistently without any interruption. It can be done simultaneously with agile development by using static analysis (SAST), dynamic analysis (DAST), and dependency scanning tools.
Her third strategy was to encourage security professionals to work directly with developers, QA engineers, and product owners. It will help to integrate security procedures into every part of the task, including progressing threat prototypes.
Ensuring Security in Agile Development
Aparna was working on a SaaS project, where the team was using Agile methodologies to promptly produce new features. The project had numerous investors pushing for frequent releases to ensure that they were performing according to the customer’s demands. The other reason for her company was to stand strong in the competitive market. She stated that, during the time of this project, there were limitations where she might not be able to complete the security evaluation on time. Not only this but a detailed check on the system would have been avoided.
Though her “never give up” attitude and smartness managed everything. She collaborated with a product owner and asked the security team to work on a subset of the product backlog and list the work items to complete in one specific sprint. The agreement of implementation was made for the data encryption and proper access control before setting out.
By analyzing the situation instead of focusing on every problem at once, they addressed a particular problem by refining their critical security features. They even prepared their forthcoming security work.
Managing Teamwork and Interaction
Aparna’s attention to detail is extremely formidable. Her management grip on her team was powerful. She was keeping track of every minor object comprehensively. She makes sure her directions for the projects are clear to everyone employed with her.
She is a go-to person, regularly checking in on the team and scheduling status reports for the stakeholders. Just to ensure everyone is working simultaneously and no person or task is left behind.
Maintaining a positive environment is one of Aparna’s things. She wants her team to be honest with her. In her workplace surroundings, whether she is conducting a meeting or debating on personalized topics, everyone is welcomed with their new perspectives. She even carefully examines them.
Enhancing Security with Microsoft Solutions
Keeping up with Microsoft security updates is important in today’s digital world. Aparna asserts that Microsoft Learning and official documentation offer up-to-date resources on security features.
One of the key securities that Aparna uses is Microsoft’s Zero Trust approach for Dynamics 365 and Power Platform. With increasing cyber threats, Microsoft has strengthened security with minimum advantage access, Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA), and Conditional Access policies. These features, which have been used by her, help reduce risks and protect sensitive data.
For example, Conditional Access Policies were set up for a client using Power Apps to ensure only compliant devices could access data. Data Loss Prevention (DLP) policies were also applied to stop unauthorized data sharing through Power Automate connectors. Additionally, Managed Environments within the Power Platform Admin Center improved governance and security by controlling how applications are deployed and monitored.
She uses these security measures so that businesses can protect their digital systems and ensure safer operations.
Advocating Robust Security Measures
Aparna had to advocate for a security solution that was initially met with stakeholders’ challenges. She was working on the live application. As a passionate woman about cybersecurity, Aparna observed that numerous people had the privilege to access the admin’s information and permissions.
According to Aparna, it is against their moral value, and she did not like the way it was working. Taking a step forward, the only solution for her is to set up new security roles for end users.
Aparna is a giver; sometimes her massive initiatives are lacking due to technical interruptions. She was migrating a legacy application to the cloud. A blockage happened because of an absence of modern security practices. It made it tough for the teams to deliver it smoothly.
Addressing Workforce Gaps in Cybersecurity
Aparna wants newcomers to stay updated. The model of cybersecurity constantly changes. According to her experience, adaptability, critical thinking, and collaborative skills are required. These key points will benefit them to stay longer in the field.
Aparna states that there is a worldwide deficiency of skilled and talented workers on this platform. Her concerns were genuine; they needed a candidate who could work under a high-pressure environment. Due to this job, many employers feel exhausted. She even stated that investing logically and financially can address the issue.
