Vivek Ramachandran joins Black Hat Arsenal review board

Vivek Ramachandran, the Founder of SquareX and a well-known figure in the offensive cybersecurity community, has accepted an influential role on the Black Hat Arsenal review board. His intent is to provide mentorship and motivation to the next generation of cybersecurity professionals.

BlackHat has become an essential conference series for the cybersecurity community, providing a forum for sharing knowledge and innovation and fostering growth. The BlackHat Arsenal, in particular, is a significant platform where authors worldwide display their innovative tools while directly interacting with the community. This interaction enhances these tools and promotes a spirit of collaboration and progression within the cybersecurity community.

Ramachandran’s cybersecurity career has seen him develop and discover attacks like the Caffe Latte attack, significantly contributing to the field. His innovative, research-driven approach led him to establish unique training platforms like Securitytube.net and Pentester Academy, which was backed by Provident Fund Equity in 2021 and subsequently acquired by INE. These platforms allow him to share his immense knowledge, training thousands of cybersecurity professionals from Fortune 500 companies, government bodies, and educational institutions.

Ramachandran’s unique teaching ethos, encapsulated in the motto “Attack is the best form of defence”, is at the core of the advanced lab platform at Pentester Academy. This teaching style has garnered widespread praise amongst professionals worldwide.

Post-acquisition of his training platform, Ramachandran, has shifted his focus to giving back to the cybersecurity community. Becoming a mentor, he created and published the comic book series “Hackers: Superheroes of the Digital Age”. This initiative aims to challenge mainstream media's negative portrayal of hackers instead, depicting them as ingenious and diverse characters who use their knowledge to tackle global issues—often with varying degrees of success. Through this initiative, Ramachandran is bringing the dynamic field of cybersecurity closer to the general public.

His recent appointment to the Black Hat Arsenal review board mirrors this commitment to mentorship and taking cybersecurity into the mainstream, providing him with another arena to nurture and guide up-and-coming talents in the field while influencing the future direction of cybersecurity.

Currently, Ramachandran is the CEO and founder of SquareX. Ramachandran, along with his team, is working to tackle the ongoing issue of last-mile browser-based attacks. Under Ramachandran's leadership, SquareX has managed not only to secure seed funding from Sequoia Capital Southeast Asia but also received a "featured" tag from the Chrome Store, garnering a user base of over 100,000 within a year of the company's formation. SquareX is on a mission to provide both individuals and enterprises with an accessible browser extension to protect themselves against malicious websites, files, online content, and networks.

SquareX is Ramachandran's latest endeavour, exemplifying his commitment to securing the digital sphere for users everywhere.