Editor’s note: The ISACA Now blog is featuring a series this year profiling ISACA professionals who are in pursuit of digital trust. Today, we profile Varun Prasad, Senior Manager, Third Party Attestation, BDO USA LLP. For more digital trust member stories and resources from ISACA, visit 1q3y.39680a.com/digital-trust.
Varun Prasad’s sports passions have mirrored his professional and life journeys.
He loves cricket, having grown up in India. He came to the United States for the first time as a student and has returned for multiple professional opportunities, including his current stint living and working in San Francisco, where he closely follows the National Football League (NFL). And Prasad developed an appreciation for the other futbol—or soccer—when he lived and worked in Brazil.
Just as Prasad’s sports fandom has been enriched by his mobile lifestyle, so too has his professional life.
“I would say yes,” Prasad said. “I’ve always found it easy to integrate into whatever country I’ve been in. Work cultures are different—some places are laid-back; some places are more formal with everything, from how you meet and interact with your coworkers to the way you write your emails. Because I’ve worked in multiple countries and experienced that at a very early part of my career, this has allowed me to connect faster with different people that I meet.”
In his current third-party attestation role, Prasad works with tech companies of varying sizes and complexities, from rising startups to large multinational corporations, to help build digital trust by addressing the security and privacy compliance requirements of customers and other stakeholders.
Prasad said he fell into IT audit “by accident,” having completed his university studies just as the US Sarbanex-Oxley Act (SOX) created a major need for IT auditors, a field he knew little about until an internship introduced him to the profession.
“I wanted to be in the technology space, but I didn’t want to do the mundane coding or cliched system architect or ops kind of a roles,” Prasad said. “I found IT audit very appealing and intriguing because it required me to be both be creative and outside the box, and also think logically. I’ve always been curious. I ask a lot of questions when I speak with my friends. Sometimes they even say, ‘This guy asks a lot of questions,’ so it sort of matched some of my natural traits and allowed me to do something within the technology space that was new and very interesting.”
Prasad’s interest in the field has not wavered since, especially considering the impact of emerging technology and related risks and controls that have kept his work dynamic. Going forward, Prasad wants to continue to sharpen his knowledge of various cloud technologies and learn more about privacy.
“How do privacy considerations and requirements sit on top of cloud implementations?” Prasad said. “This is one area I’d like to specialize more in and get a deeper understanding of, because that’s where the world is headed. I need to keep myself updated to really survive in this jungle.”
No matter which continent Prasad’s professional career has taken him to, ISACA has been a constant. When in India, Prasad was an active member of the ISACA Bangalore Chapter, and he has remained connected to ISACA since then, including volunteering with the CISM Working Group.
“ISACA is where I’ve found guidance, mentorship, any sort of help and support,” Prasad. “That’s what has motivated me to give back, because I know there are a lot of folks coming out of college or in the first couple years of their career wanting to do well in the fields of controls, risk management and compliance, but don’t really have the right guidance.”
Prasad’s challenges in Brazil varied from working with the Portuguese version of Microsoft Word to trying to track down vegetarian food in a country known for eating lots of meat. His time in South America served as another real-time life lesson in understanding social customs and business norms, helping to shape his perspectives for years to come.
Prasad believes it is important to understand people’s stories and viewpoints in order to better collaborate on a professional level. For him, there has been no better icebreaker than sports or travel in getting to know others. Despite his busy work schedule, Prasad continues to make time to enjoy sports, and what better event for a globally savvy sports enthusiast to enjoy than the Olympics? He hopes attending an Olympics is in his future.
“My bucket list in sports is to go to the Olympic games, because I think at the end of the day, the Olympics are considered to be the mecca where the entire sporting world comes together,” Prasad said.
