AWS Verified episode 6: A conversation with Reeny Sondhi of Autodesk

I’m happy to share the latest episode of AWS Verified, where we bring you global conversations with leaders about issues impacting cybersecurity, privacy, and the cloud. We take this opportunity to meet with leaders from various backgrounds in security, technology, and leadership.

For our latest episode of Verified, I had the opportunity to meet virtually with Reeny Sondhi, Vice President and Chief Security Officer of Autodesk. In her role, Reeny drives security-related strategy and decisions across the company. She leads the teams responsible for the security of Autodesk’s infrastructure, cloud, products, and services, as well as the teams dedicated to security governance, risk & compliance, and security incident response.

Reeny and I touched on a variety of subjects, from her career journey, to her current stewardship of Autodesk’s security strategy based on principles of trust. Reeny started her career in product management, having conceptualized, created, and brought multiple software and hardware products to market. “My passion as a product manager was to understand customer problems and come up with either innovative products or features to help solve them. I tell my team I entered the world of security by accident from product management, but staying in this profession has been my choice. I’ve been able to take the same passion I had when I was a product manager for solving real world customer problems forward as a security leader. Even today, sitting down with my customers, understanding what their problems are, and then building a security program that directly solves these problems, is core to how I operate.”

Autodesk has customers across a wide variety of industries, so Reeny and her team work to align the security program with customer experience and expectations. Reeny has also worked to drive security awareness across Autodesk, empowering employees throughout the organization to act as security owners. “One lesson is consistency in approach. And another key lesson that I’ve learned over the last few years is to demystify security as much as possible for all constituents in the organization. We have worked pretty hard to standardize security practices across the entire organization, which has helped us in scaling security throughout Autodesk.”

Reeny and Autodesk are setting a great example on how to innovate on behalf of their customers, securely. I encourage you to learn more about her perspective on this, and other aspects of how to manage and scale a modern security program, by watching the interview.

Watch my interview with Reeny, and visit the Verified webpage for previous episodes, including conversations with security leaders at Netflix, Comcast, and Vodafone. If you have any suggestions for topics you’d like to see featured in future episodes, please leave a comment below.

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