Overview

Varadharaj Krishnan is a prominent cybersecurity leader at Tesla. As a Senior Manager of Information Security, he leads a suite of security domains, including Security Software Engineering, Infrastructure Security, Endpoint Security, Vulnerability Management, and Operational Technology (OT) Security. His role at the forefront of one of the most innovative companies in the world has endowed him with substantial experience in navigating and managing complex cybersecurity challenges in a high-stakes environment. He was a founding member of T-Mobile’s Cloud Center of Excellence; he laid down the essential platforms and infrastructure necessary for cloud adoption, paving a secure way for cloud adoption at T-Mobile. During his time there, he led all aspects of Cloud Security, including security engineering and operations.

His journey in cybersecurity spans over 15 years, during which he has led large teams across various domains within cybersecurity. His security philosophy centers around making secure practices the default for engineers and developers, favoring guardrails over gates. This philosophy underpins his and his team’s approach to security. Much of his methodology involved developing genuinely useful security tools and processes, moving beyond mere compliance. His dedication to this cause led to the Policy as Code Bot (PacBot), T-Mobile’s own Cloud Security Posture Management tool, which remains a central platform for security remediations at T-Mobile. His commitment to innovation and community collaboration is evident in his initiative to open-source tools he built at T-Mobile, like PacBot (Pacbot.org) and T-Vault. Today, PacBot has gained commercial success as https://paladincloud.io, a fast-growing startup, and is now widely adopted in the industry.

His leadership at T-Mobile and Tesla, running multiple security functions, and developing tools and open-source contributions that have achieved commercial success demonstrate his commitment to cybersecurity and his ability to build practical, innovative solutions.