#11 Twitter CISO Rinki Sethi on leading cybersecurity
& trailblazing in The White Tiger and the White House
Welcome to Season 2! I’m Simi Shah, the founder of Trailblazers and the author of this newsletter. Along with my team of 6, we bring you trailblazing by and for South Asians here every other Tuesday and on our website, IG, LinkedIn, and archives.
Hot off the Pod 🔥🎙️ Rinki Sethi, Chief Information Security Officer @ Twitter
Listen to our Season 2 Opener, my conversation with Rinki Sethi, Chief Information Security Officer at Twitter.
Rinki’s hiring at Twitter was a watershed moment. She joined the team in September 2020, after the platform suffered a major hack that compromised the accounts of figures like President Joe Biden, Elon Musk, and Former President Obama. Previously, she served as Chief Information Security Officer at cloud data management company Rubrik, and also held senior cybersecurity roles at IBM, Palo Alto Networks and Intuit. She began her career at the Pacific Gas and Electric Company, Walmart, and Ebay. On the side, Rinki serves as an advisor to several startups, including LevelOps, Authomize, and organizations like Women in Cybersecurity.
Read on for excerpts from the podcast!
The other day you tweeted about how you got your start in cybersecurity by finding a keylogger that your dad had used to spy on you. Is that really where it all began?
It was funny. I was probably 15. I remember either that hearing a conversation between my parents, where my dad was talking about something I had chatted with to a friend about on AIM, AOL Instant Messenger. And I thought, ‘I only talked about that online. How would he know about that?’ And so then I started looking on my computer to see if he had put some software on there. And sure enough, I found it. It was a parent spy tool of some sort. The keylogger was capturing everything that I typed, and then he could see it on his machine. So I found it, and I uninstalled it. But he would reinstall it. And then I would go back and uninstall it. And I decided I didn't want to have to check every single time he reinstalled it. So I wrote a program that would alert me anytime it was installed. And so I realized I had that hacker mindset back then, even though I didn't quite know what it was at that point — it was just playing cat and mouse with my dad.
Twitter has 330 million monthly active users, and is a very consumer facing business. What have been the things that have surprised you about being the CISO there as compared to your past experiences?
It's not just because the number of consumers, but it's how the news affects the cybersecurity component of the business. You never know what a day is gonna look like at Twitter. At most companies, you can anticipate. At Intuit, I could anticipate — tax season was going to be a heavy period for the company. Or when I was at eBay, it was Black Friday, and certain times of the year that we see spikes. Whereas with Twitter, you don't know. You can't predict what's going to happen tomorrow. Some major current event happens, and suddenly Twitter becomes the center of it. And so, it’s the realization that you can't always prevent threats, but you have to be very good at reacting. And you have to be good at preventing things from happening when the news might shift. That part has been the most interesting to me — that every day is different. You don't know what to always expect or when we might become a target for a cybersecurity threat because of what's in the news or what somebody might have tweeted.
Catching Fire 🚀 your news roundup
📺 On Screen
Kajol’s comeback. What people are calling the new Slumdog Millionaire.
🇺🇸 In Politics
The first South Asian Vice President in case… you live under a rock. And…all the other South Asian trailblazers in the White House. And drone strikes: the reason why some Pakistanis will miss Trump.
🌎 Scenes from South Asia
A border skirmish between China and India. Justice for a nun 3 decades later.
👩🏽💻 From my desk to your inbox: On The White Tiger
Step aside, Slumdog. The Netflix hit The White Tiger is what people are calling the new Slumdog Millionaire — though that might be a generous description. The Priyanka Chopra-produced film offers an important window into servant culture in India, which roughly translates to servitude. It follows Balram, a poor boy from rural India who’s raised to serve the rich, but who eventually flouts ingrained casteism and societal expectations after a series of ~incidents~ (limiting spoilers here!).
The star, Adarsh Gourav, plays his character phenomenally. His character’s psyche explicates a seemingly inexplicable way of life — and this explication saves the film. But it unravels because the filmmakers deploy a series of non sequiturs that we’re supposed to interpret as a plotline. We experience superfluous peaks and troughs, climaxes and anti-climaxes.
Here’s the thing: the film is a retrospective. Though we know where all roads will eventually lead, we’re along for the ride because we’re uncertain as to how we’re going to get there. The thing is: that “how” doesn’t quite deliver the punchline the audience expects. Ultimately, I emerged from my screening feeling more confused than satiated, despite rooting for Balram most of the way. But hey, it’s worth the watch.
What are your thoughts? Drop them in the comments below!⬇️
Shop South Asian 🛍️ Spotlight: Brown Girl Beauty
We’ll be sharing businesses from @shopsouthasian, our premier platform where we’re connecting you to South Asian businesses around the globe. This week, check out Brown Girl Beauty, an all inclusive makeup line made specifically for Brown skin. It was founded by Aliza Adhami in 2020.
Stream South Asian 🎵
Check out our Spotify playlist featuring emerging South Asian artists.