Well known as the “Cyber Guardian”, Kavya Pearlman is an Award-winning cybersecurity professional with a deep interest in immersive and emerging technologies. Kavya is the founder of the non-profit, XR Safety Initiative (XRSI). XRSI is the very first global effort that promotes privacy, security, ethics and develops standards and guidelines for Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality and Mixed Reality (VR/AR/MR) collectively known as XR.

Kavya has advised Facebook on third party security risks during the 2016 US presidential elections. She currently advises Wallarm, a global security company that protects hundreds of customers across e-commerce, fintech, health-tech, and SaaS for their AI-powered application security platform as a Global Cybersecurity Strategist. Kavya is one of the Top 50 speakers in the cybersecurity industry and constantly shares knowledge via webinars, conference talks and blog posts around Application Security, Cloud-native technologies, Machine Learning and immersive technologies such as XR.

Kavya is constantly exploring new technologies to solve current cybersecurity challenges. She has been named one of the Top Cybersecurity influencers for two consecutive years 2018-29019 by IFSEC Global. Kavya has won many awards for her work and contribution to the security community including 40 under 40 Top Business Executives 2019 by San Francisco Business Times, Rising Star of the year 2019 by Women in IT Award Series and Minority CISO of the Year 2018 by ICMCP. For her work with XR Safety Initiative, she was nominated as the Innovator of the year 2019 and received the CISO Women Security Leader award from Middle East CISO Council.

Kavya holds a master’s degree network security from DePaul University, Chicago and holds many prestigious Information Security certifications including CISM (Certified Information Security Manager) from ISACA, and PCIP for Payment Card Industry Security Standard Council. Kavya is truly passionate about her work and inspires many around the world including women.