Nivathan Athiganoor Somasundharam

Additional Info

Job title of nominated professional (or team name)Technical Account Manager
Company (where nominated professional or team is working)Gravitational Inc DBA Teleport
Websitehttps://goteleport.com/
Company size (employees)100 to 499
CountryUnited States
Headquarters RegionNorth America

Overview

Nivathan Athiganoor Somasundharam, a Technical Account Manager at Gravitational Inc DBA Teleport, stands out as a distinguished leader in identity security. Teleport specializes in privileged access management (PAM), securing access to the cloud, servers, Kubernetes, applications, desktops, and databases. Nivathan is crucial in guiding customers through complex areas such as identity security, passwordless authentication, RBAC, Zero Trust strategy, cloud infrastructure access, and identity threat detection and response.

Nivathan’s expertise in Cloud, DevSecOps, Container technologies, and Cybersecurity sets him apart in the industry, as few possess this rare combination of skills. His career journey includes notable roles as a DevSecOps practitioner at startups and major tech companies like VMware. He holds a Master’s in Computer Science from Texas A&M University, further cementing his technical foundation. Nivathan did not stop learning. His certifications prove that he has been learning continuously throughout his career, which is very important to be a strategic professional in Cybersecurity and DevSecOps because of its evolving nature.

Nivathan is very strategic in executing cybersecurity programs at Teleport for Teleport customers and in his previous jobs as a DevSecOps practitioner. He always stays on top of the threat vector and the trends and stays ahead of the bad actors to keep the organization safe and secure. His exposure to modern infrastructure helped him find vulnerable practices while companies go through modernization journeys like moving to the cloud and Kubernetes.

Accomplishments

1. The most common and often exploited attack vectors in 2023 and 2024 is Identity, primarily because of weak credentials or social engineering. On average, a breach could cost an organization about 4.5 million. Nivathan At Teleport has influenced some of the best practices companies can adopt to avoid attacks like passwordless, Just-In-Time access, and Zero Trust by implementing Teleport. The organization has avoided relying on perimeter security and weak credentials and secrets to prevent identity-based attacks.
He has developed an adapter for Carbon Black (Container Vulnerability Scanning) and Harbor (Container Image Registry), which he open-sourced. His contributions are substantial and widely used by several organizations today https://github.com/vmware/carbon-black-adapter-for-harbor


2. Nivathan is a leading thought leader in the cybersecurity space. Here are some of her invaluable published work, Conference talks, and Webinars -:
- Speaker at Teleport Connect 2023 - Achieving Access Management Best Practices with Teleport:
- Speaker at Bsides RedRocks UT 2024 - Securing Infrastructure Access Ephemeral Access
- Published on Security Senses Magazine - Do we need ITDR
- Published on Security Boulevard Magazine - How to Prepare Identity Stack to adopt the Zero Trust Model
- Webinar - Managing Multi-Account AWS Console and CLI Access with Teleport:
- Webinar - Securing Elastic Kubernetes Cluster (EKS) with Teleport:
https://goteleport.com/resources/videos/securing-eks-with-teleport/
- Interview with Digital Journal - DevSecOps and Zero Trust Insights https://www.digitaljournal.com/tech-science/devsecops-and-zero-trust-nivathan-athiganoor-somasundharams-cybersecurity-insights/article


3. Several awards have been recognized for Nivathan's work, and his certifications show his commitment to keeping up with trends and being a strategic cybersecurity professional.
- Top InfoSec Innovators Awards 2024 -
- Titans Awards - Cloud Security Evangelist
- Indian Achievers Award in the field of cybersecurity.
Nivathan also holds numerous industry-recognized certifications, including:
- AWS Certified Solutions Architect, Security Expert, SysOps Administrator, Developer
- Microsoft-certified Azure Expert
- CompTIA CySA+ ce Certification:
- CKA: Certified Kubernetes Administrator
- CKAD: Certified Kubernetes App


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