Imran Muthuvappa

I was born and raised in upstate New York, where I remember helping my elementary school teachers with their computer problems, hacking wifi networks, and even mining bitcoin on high school computers. (Luckily, I didnt get in trouble for that!) In university, I did three semesters of research in privacy in social networks, blockchain-based intrusion detection, and more. The research position required me to gain expertise in networking, cryptography, and social media. More specifically, for the P-Chain project, I created a prototype demonstrating how IoT devices could store and publish transaction history in the form of a blockchain, as well as other types of DAG’s. This implementation was in Python. I actively contributed to open source in college and tutored many peers on topics in cybersecurity and computer science in undergrad.

My curiosity led me to a career in technology, and my background in research and cybersecurity led me to Palo Alto Networks. There, I worked cross functionally with sales, IT, security, marketing, and more! Through that experience, I learned a ton and found that my unique skillset was mainly around communication, product, and engineering. While at Palo Alto Networks, I won 2 hackathons and a capture the flag competition. My work in IT and SOAR automation enabled me to join sales calls as an occasional sales engineer for the XSOAR product. From there, I began freelancing and ultimately ended up cofounding a company called Kayyo, where I actively lead as a CTO for a team of 4.