From Lawyer to Super Lawyer
A big part of Sachin’s childhood was observing his father, once an immigrant, achieve the American dream by climbing up the corporate ladder after having migrated to the US in the 1970s. Needless to say, Sachin idolized his father’s work ethic, and with an investment banker elder brother, hard work was a quality the Bansals were quite familiar with.
A young Sachin however, would spend most of his time reading John Grisham’s legal thrillers, wondering how he too could help the vulnerable and helpless in society. Soon thereafter, Sachin found himself completely enamored by the world of litigation.
After graduating magna cum laude from Duke University and magna cum laude from Duke University School of Law, Sachin spent many years in litigation working on a wide range of legal issues right from bankruptcy to government regulation. A few years back, however, he had an epiphany – “The “lawyer of tomorrow” (cheesy, I know) needed skill sets in cybersecurity, data privacy, and intellectual property. And as a long-time litigator, I wasn’t getting these.”
That is when a fresh career decision was made, and Sachin made the jump from litigation to technology law. He soon got the opportunity to join SecurityScorecard and has never looked back since. “I promised myself I would only work for a company whose product I believed in, and that’s why I turned down other opportunities where I wasn’t particularly excited about the product. Joining SecurityScorecard is one of the best career decisions I have ever made,” shares Sachin.
A vital part of the company since 2019, Sachin leads the company’s legal and public sector functions. He has been a key participant in all of SecurityScorecard’s strategic transactions, including its $180 million Series E round completed in March 2021. He is also a frequent speaker, writer, and media commentator, particularly on cybersecurity matters, and has been featured in the Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg Law, Arianna Huffington’s Thrive Global, Law360, Authority Magazine, and many others.
Over the years Sachin has had the opportunity to work with some of the most well-respected industry leaders but remains ever grateful to his parents for being his support system throughout his professional journey. Another person Sachin mentions impacted him the most is the late Jack Cooney, one of the most prominent white collared litigators out of the New York City area. “Jack taught me the value of being polite and thoughtful in every interaction I had, personal or professional,” he mentions fondly.
A Stand-up Guy
If one were to assume that Sachin is an all work and no play kind of legal professional, one would be greatly mistaken. One of Sachin’s “worst kept secrets”, as he likes to call it, is his passion for doing stand-up comedy. “I started doing this almost 10 years ago when I was going through a difficult and dark time in my life and, on a whim, I enrolled in an introductory workshop sponsored by New York’s famed Comedy Cellar, which included two performances on the Comedy Cellar’s stage,” shares Sachin.
Juggling a demanding career as an attorney and his passion project as a stand-up comedian has helped Sachin become “a better writer, quicker on my feet, and, of course, just a little bit funnier than I used to be.” In his many years as a breakthrough attorney, Sachin says that he has often found himself in circumstances where he has had to use his comedic power to defuse tense situations and break the ice.
Sachin also happens to be an ardent admirer of Mahatma Gandhi, due to his nonviolent beliefs and the contributions made by him for uplifting communities in India and South Africa. He lives his life as per his favorite Gandhi quote – “You must be the change you wish to see in the world.”
Empowering the Global System
SecurityScorecard’s core mission is to make the world a safer place. To this effect, the company has dedicated its resources to aid not-for-profit organizations. The company provides complimentary access to its platform to non-profit organizations throughout the world, to assess their cybersecurity risks and update to the latest compliances. Sachin says, “We launched this initiative in early 2019 and we call it Project Escher, named in honor of acclaimed Dutch artist M.C. Escher whose work requires the viewer to explore multiple perspectives to truly experience and understand his art.”
Sustainability and the Future
SecurityScorecard has been a remote-only company, with the occasional meet and greets at their offices, long before the Covid-19 pandemic. “We made a conscious decision to become a remote-first company. This enables us to hire better talent and also allows us to increase the diversity of our talent in a more thoughtful, scalable way,” says Sachin.
While organizations around the world we’re dealing with the far-reaching impact of the pandemic, SecurityScorecard partnered with CyberEdge, a company dedicated to strategic planning, and released a report titled ‘The Impact of COVID-19 on Enterprise IT Security Teams’. The report was published in late 2020 and was derived from a study done to assess COVID-19’s impact on enterprise-level cyber security, in order to provide valuable insight to industry leaders regarding what to expect in the foreseeable future.
Looking into the future, SecurityScorecard continues to redefine the cybersecurity space with its unrivaled innovation, transparent insights, and a team of some of the best technology innovators in the world. As for Sachin, he continues to be a vital part of the organization, spearheading numerous initiatives aimed at strengthening cybersecurity compliances. “The most exciting part of my job is explaining what cybersecurity risk ratings are and why they matter… We truly believe that what we do helps companies be more secure against the bad guys who will stop at nothing to keep hacking and attacking.”
With more companies publicly disclosing their cybersecurity ratings, coupled with greater scrutiny on vendors and third parties to maintain good security scores, for Sachin and SecurityScorecard, the best is surely yet to come.
