API gateways help in monitoring business enhancements: Lokesh Vishwanath, Associate Director, Cyber Security Engineering, GSK

GlaxoSmithKline plc is a British multinational pharmaceutical and biotechnology company with its global headquarters in London, England. It is one of the world’s largest research-based pharmaceutical companies that discovers, develops, manufactures and markets human health products. It operates through the following segments: Pharmaceuticals, Vaccines, Consumer Healthcare, and Corporate Executive Team (CET).

Express computer had a chance to interact with Lokesh Vishwanath, Associate Director, Cyber Security Engineering, GSK during the Technology Senate South edition in Hyderabad on wide ranging topics related to security and growth.  

Vishwanath believes that security and speed are integral and a top down approach should be used to enhance it. He further added by saying, “One must look at the basic fundamentals of security and ensure that it is robust. Organizations should prioritize on implementing faster breach detection system by leveraging Artificial Intelligence,  and the latest security tools to curb the average dwelling time of malwares in IT systems.”

He said, “we work with many stakeholders outside of our enterprise, and establishing that connectivity definitely has a cyber security aspect involed, and speed makes a lot of difference to those businesses. And we as an organisation should be ready to address business requirements at the earliest time to maintain continuity. At the same time we need to look at the internal and external aspects of the business. ”

Speaking about security, Vishwanath further added by saying, “I would look at it from two aspects: API gateways – it is required and helps in keeping a watch on the business enhancements and requirements. And the second thing is that it also keeps its basic right, in terms of recognising those API’s as assets. APIs are not independently seen as an asset and it is usually associated with some hardware or software, so when you try to recognise it, it has a huge impact on your API gateway security. And I would conclude by saying that cybersecurity preparedness and cybersecurity resilience along with risk management, and business continuity planning should be of top priority for companies while planning and executing their course of actions.”