Deepen Desai

Chief Security Officer | EVP R&D

San Francisco Bay Area

About

- 20+ years of experience as a cybersecurity and business leader. - Lead research and development function at UTM, Firewall, and Cloud Security companies, building and scaling teams and operations. - Well known cybersecurity industry expert, keynote speaker (CXO Summits, Zenith Live, RSAC Top Speaker, Blackhat, Botconf, and more), often featured on media publications (NBC, Times, Forbes, Washington Post, VentureBeat, TechTarget, and more), panels and webinars. - Unique blend of deep cybersecurity & technical expertise, business acumen & pragmatic approach, ability to simplify complex problems, motivate teams & lead from front. - Author of 30+ patents with ~10 patents granted, several security blogs, reports and bylines. Key Highlights 1. Incubating new cybersecurity innovations [Engineering, Strategy, and GTM] - Engineered Malware and Threat automation infrastructure with contribution to unique cloud gateway AV technology. [2010-2011] - Next generation cloud sandboxing technology. [2011-2014] - Leading Deception & ITDR engineering & GTM teams post acquisition, product strategy & direction for Zscaler platform integration and growing the revenue nearly 20x in 3 years. [2021-2024] - Risk 360 industry's first most comprehensive cyber risk quantification tool - product design, risk modeling, attack surface management. [2022-2024] - Zscaler Cloud sandbox innovations in partnership with core platform engineering teams leading the product from launch to $$ million in revenue. [2014-2024] - Cyber & AI innovations being incubated - Breach Predictor - Agentic SOC platform, Attack Surface Management, Threat Hunting Service. [2023-2025] 2. Cybersecurity Leader, Expert & Mentor - Industry Initiatives - SIG Co-Chair for Critical SaaS IT-ISAC SIG featuring prominent critical SaaS companies like Zscaler, ServiceNow, Guidewire, Oracle, and more. - Thought Leadership - Security Leadership Panels, Security Conference presentations, CXO Summit Keynotes - Internal Security - Leading Product & Corporate security teams - Trained and mentored 100+ security researchers, engineers, and leaders - Collaboration with security industry leaders and global LE agencies

Experience

  • Zscaler (12 yrs 1 mo)
    • EVP R&D - Agentic Operations, Product Security, ThreatLabz
      Jul 2025 - Present · 1 yr 1 mo

      Responsible for building Zscaler security data fabric and Agentic security operations platform. Lead global security research (ThreatLabz) and cyber AI innovation team.

    • Chief Security Officer | EVP Cyber & AI Engineering
      May 2020 - Present · 6 yrs 3 mos

      + Incubating new cybersecurity innovations that gets integrated into Zscaler Zero Trust Platform - Deception, ITDR, Breach Prediction, Risk360 + Responsible for internal security - corporate & product + Head of Security Research (ThreatLabz) & Security Services

    • VP Security Research & Operations
      Apr 2018 - May 2020 · 2 yrs 2 mos

  • Dell | SonicWALL (7 yrs 6 mos)
    • Senior Threats Research Manager
      Aug 2010 - Jul 2014 · 4 yrs

      - Managing Malware research team & AV operations - Involved in new security research projects - Development of automation tools related to malware analysis.

    • Staff Software Engineer, Vulnerability/Malware Research Analyst
      Aug 2009 - Jul 2010 · 1 yr

    • Sr. Software Engineer, Vulnerability/Malware Research Analyst
      Feb 2007 - Jul 2009 · 2 yrs 6 mos

      - Track & analyze new malwares, spywares, exploits, and vulnerabilities. - Write attack signatures for SonicWALL Gateway AV and IPS using proprietary signature description language. - Reverse engineer and analyze Malware, P2P and IM application's traffic. - Develop simulation software and enhance test environment to replicate attacks. - Develop automation software

  • Security Research Engineer at iPolicy Networks, Inc.
    Jun 2004 - Jan 2007 · 2 yrs 8 mos

    A senior member of Security Research Group at iPolicy Networks Inc. - Track and analyze network intrusion threats - Vulnerabilities, Exploits, and Malware (Worms/Trojans/Spywares). - IDS/IPS signature development and validation. - Validation of dynamic application decodes for popular applications (E.g. Yahoo Messenger, Windows Live Messenger, Skype etc). - Experience of building, versioning and releasing new IDS/IPS signature packs. - Publish customer advisories giving the analysis of newly discovered vulnerabilities and malware threats. - Actively interact with customers to respond to their queries about IDS/IPS signatures and to develop custom signatures upon request.

  • Assistant System & Network Admin at Comprehensive Blood & Cancer Center (CBCC), Bakersfield, CA
    Jun 2003 - Aug 2003 · 3 mos

    Summer Internship - Assisting in managing a large corporate network consisting of mission-critical machines (which are linked to medical devices). - Lead a project of connecting two remote medical offices for exchanging medical information (large size images) securely