Cybersecurity Awareness Month: Industry Leaders Share Insights

October 2025’s National Cybersecurity Awareness Month arrives amid familiar headlines about AI-driven threats, but the conversation from industry leaders represented here shifts the frame. Rather than treating security as a compliance checkbox or a crisis response function, executives say organisations must treat trust as a foundational infrastructure that enables innovation across sectors from fintech to mobility to semiconductor testing.

This National Cybersecurity Awareness Month, CiOL spotlights the voices leading this transformation—CISOs, researchers, and technology visionaries who are redefining what modern security means. Their experiences show that the future of cybersecurity isn’t just about stronger firewalls but smarter collaboration and continuous learning. The leaders quoted in this package from Broadridge to Autorox, Keysight, Indium, EY-Parthenon, LeadSquared and others point to three practical shifts that organisations should prioritise today: embedding security into product lifecycles, elevating testing and validation, and combining human creativity with AI-driven red-teaming.

Ranjeetha Raja, Head of Product, Enterprise Platforms, India

At Broadridge, cybersecurity is not just a function; it’s the foundation of everything we build. As we power critical fintech and financial services operations globally, our clients rely on us to safeguard their most sensitive data and transactions. Security is one of the core tenets woven into every product, process and service at Broadridge, ensuring resilience against evolving threats. With the financial industry’s increasing digitisation and regulatory complexity, proactive risk management is essential. Our teams employ advanced threat intelligence, continuous monitoring, and zero-trust frameworks to protect against vulnerabilities before they impact clients. Equally important, we cultivate a culture of security awareness, empowering every associate to champion this cause. By making cybersecurity integral to innovation, Broadridge enables firms to scale confidently, accelerate digital transformation, and maintain the trust that is vital to every financial relationship in today’s interconnected world.

Vijay Gummadi, CEO, Autorox

Think about how much of your car's life is now digital. It's amazing, but it also means we have to be careful. At Autorox, we collaborate closely with auto repair shops, vehicle owners, insurers, fleet operators, and spares suppliers globally, and we understand that trust is the foundation of every digital interaction. As technology transforms the automotive aftermarket, safeguarding data and ensuring privacy have become as important as innovation itself. Cybersecurity Awareness Month serves as a powerful reminder that progress and protection must go hand in hand. By building platforms that are secure, transparent, and resilient, we aim to empower our ecosystem with confidence in every digital touchpoint. Protecting data goes beyond just meeting standards; it's fundamentally about respecting our customers, earning their trust, and creating a safer, smarter future for the entire mobility ecosystem.

Sudhir Singh, Country Manager, Keysight Technologies

“The Indian cybersecurity landscape continues to evolve with the increase of rapid digital transformation and growing complexity of threats across industries. The industry’s focus is on helping organisations strengthen their network resilience and access their security posture through comprehensive testing & validation. This aligns with the solutions that our testing systems are integrating in critical sectors such as automotive, semiconductor, energy, general electronics, and supporting technologies like 5G/6G, AI, and electric vehicles.

With advancements in AI and quantum computing, testing methodologies are also transformed to manage higher data speeds, lower latency, and unpredictable vulnerabilities. Continuous integration, delivery, and testing (CI/CD/CT) supported by AI-augmented automation are enabling customers to anticipate vulnerabilities and accelerate innovation. The larger goal for the industry is building measurable assurance and aligning tools and processes to protect digital business, not merely patching them.

Keysight, being a leader in test and measurement, has recently completed the acquisition of Spirent Communications to further strengthen the capabilities in network assurance, automation, and satellite simulation, helping industries address security challenges across terrestrial and non-terrestrial networks.”

Srikanth Manoharan, Executive Vice President, Quality Engineering, Indium

“Generative AI captivates all ages, yet it simultaneously lures cyber adversaries. Unable to solicit direct hacking instructions, attackers are now exploiting prompt injection to manipulate GenAI applications. Traditional defence strategies are no longer sufficient—the GenAI era demands a holistic yet segmented security approach. Our quality engineering teams are evolving to assess security across multiple dimensions, integrating red team assessments that merge human intelligence and creativity to simulate and expose the model's vulnerabilities to prompt injection. This proactive approach enables creators to swiftly contain risky model behaviours and ensure the safety and resilience of next-generation AI systems.”

Anandaraj Krishnan, Deal Tech (DT) Leader, GDS EY-Parthenon

“In today’s hyperconnected world, cybersecurity is no longer a backroom IT concern but a boardroom imperative. As digital becomes the default, the attack surface expands exponentially, and so must our vigilance. 

Cyber resilience is not just about firewalls and protocols; it’s about mindset and clarity. We must embed security into the DNA of our operations – proactively, not reactively. This means empowering every individual, from an analyst to the C-suite, to act as a sentinel of trust.

At a time when trust is currency and breaches can erode decades of brand equity in minutes, cybersecurity becomes the cornerstone of sustainable value creation. The future belongs to those who can innovate securely, scale responsibly, and lead with integrity.

Let’s not just defend against threats; let’s outpace them.” 

Prashant Singh – COO & Co-Founder, LeadSquared

“As AI transforms how the world works, learns, and connects, the need for resilient and intelligent data security has never been greater. Every interaction today generates data that fuels business decisions, but it also demands accountability. At LeadSquared, we see security not just as compliance but as an engineering principle that shapes how we design, build, and scale.

From the very first line of code to the final user experience, trust is our architecture. We comply with global standards like the DPDP Act, AICPA SOC 2, HIPAA, and GDPR, ensuring that privacy and protection are deeply embedded in our systems. As AI accelerates innovation, we are focused on building secure, scalable, and ethical technology that helps businesses grow confidently while safeguarding their customers’ trust. I truly believe that in an AI-powered world, innovation without security isn’t progress; it’s a risk.”