Press Releases

Prague, Czech Republic / Goa, India, March 5, 2020 – Jaya Baloo, Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) at Avast (LSE:AVST), a global leader in consumer cybersecurity products, will be speaking at Nullcon Goa 2020, in India, in a talk titled  “Become a CISO & live life in the fast lane”. Baloo will share her experience of Avast’s “Abiss” security incident, provide strategies to keep an organization secure, and present Avast’s bug bounty program. She will take the stage on March 6, 2020 at 12:00PM local time.

Baloo’s first action as Avast’s CISO was to instigate an extensive investigation into suspicious behavior her team identified within the Avast network, later naming the case “Abiss”. First steps included collaborating with the Czech intelligence agency, Security Information Service (BIS), as well as with an external forensics team to provide additional tooling to assist the CISO team’s efforts to analyze the detected behavior. In her talk, Baloo will share her experience of her first days and months at global cybersecurity company Avast, which itself prevents attacks on hundreds of millions of users.

Baloo will also address the creation of a sustainable, long-term strategy to secure an organization whose mission is to secure others. This includes the enhancement of the organization’s awareness of threats against it, counter measurements and responsibilities, identifying vulnerabilities, and increasing overall security capabilities. 

Baloo supports collaboration with the security research community. This helps to detect vulnerabilities quickly in the software an organization provides, which in turns aids the creation and provision of more secure products. As part of this collaboration, Baloo will introduce Avast’s bug bounty program to the Nullcon audience.

Media:Please contact us if you are interested in an interview with Jaya Baloo: pr@avast.com

About Jaya Baloo, Chief Information Security Officer at Avast:Jaya Baloo is Avast’s Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) and joined Avast in October 2019. Previously, Ms. Baloo held the position of CISO at KPN, the largest telecommunications carrier in the Netherlands, where she established and lead its security team whose best practices in strategy and policy are today recognized as world leading. Prior to this, Ms. Baloo also held the position of Practice Lead Lawful Interception at Verizon, and worked at France Telecom as a Technical Security Specialist.

Ms. Baloo is formally recognized within the list of top 100 CISOs globally and ranks among the top 100 security influencers worldwide. In 2019, she was also selected as one of the fifty most inspiring women in the Netherlands by Inspiring Fifty, a non-profit aiming to raise diversity in technology by making female role models in technology more visible.

Ms. Baloo has been working in the field of information security, with a focus on secure network architecture, for over 20 years and sits on the advisory boards of the NL’s National Cyber Security Centre, PQCrypto and Flagship Strategic. She serves on the audit committee of TIIN capital, a cybersecurity fund, and is also a member of the IT Committee of Sociale Verzekeringsbank. Ms. Baloo is currently a member of EU Quantum having been a member of the EU High Level Steering Committee for the FET Quantum Flagship from 2016 - 2017.