ExtraMile by WisdomPlexus is a thought-provoking interview series featuring industry leaders and trendsetters. Here, we discuss the newest technologies, marketing trends, security practices, and more.
For today's insightful session, Yogita Parulekar, the Chief Executive Officer of Invi Grid, joined us to share her wisdom and knowledge on the evolving threat landscape alongside robust security methodologies. Invi Grid is a leader in Zero-Day security and governance. While integrating innovation, the firm empowers developers and businesses with cutting-edge cloud security and provisioning strategies.
Yogita, as a tech leader for over two decades, has contributed remarkably to innovating security practices throughout the years. With multiple honorary recognitions under her belt, including Silicon Valley Business Journal 2025 Power 100 and Top 150 Women Fighting Cybercrime by CyberCrime Magazine, Yogita reflects her determination and commitment to transform the security ecosystem across the globe.
In the discussions, we'll dive into Yogita's relentless contribution to the security space, alongside identifying the key reasons that shaped the establishment of Invi Grid and the role of zero-day and zero-trust security in strengthening the cloud security infrastructure.
Welcome, Yogita; it's a pleasure to have you with us today!
1. You have been named among the Silicon Valley Business Journal 2025 Power 100. What do such recognitions mean to you, and how do you strive to become one of the best in the industry?
Yogita. I am grateful for the recognitions. I didn’t aim for them. As Estee Lauder has said, “I don’t dream for success, I just work for it” I have always just put my head down and worked hard.
2. Invi Grid is a superior security solutions provider. Which pitfalls did you identify in the industry while establishing the firm?
Yogita. On one hand we have security solutions that provide us visibility into the security issues, such as cloud misconfigurations. But all of this is after the fact, after the systems have been built incorrectly. What we need is to bake security in while the systems and cloud environments are being built. Unfortunately, the solutions used by cloud operations, who build the cloud environments, and those used by cloud architects and cloud security teams are siloed and disconnected. This makes the process slow, error prone and requires experts to cobble together and maintain. What we like to call a broken bridge syndrome.
Businesses, on the other hand, are under immense pressure to take their solutions to market fast so that they can start generating revenue fast. This means any friction, including security, which gets considered as friction, takes a back seat. This combination of slow processes under business expectation of speed invariably means mistakes will be made and cloud misconfigurations end up being the norm.
Further, remediating these infrastructure mistakes when revenue generating apps are already running on it is not just difficult but also many times impossible.
In addition, in the age of AI, pressure to innovate and go to market fast, while staying lean, is greater than ever before, as AI is supposed to make things faster, more efficient – we have all heard of a 3-person unicorn startup expectation! We also know that AI is in the cloud and AI feeds on data. All this pressure and the inherent risks involved means mistakes will be made and will be costlier than ever before.
InviGrid’s secure-by-design approach makes designing and building secure, well-architected clouds easy and seamless. Unified approach brings cloud architects, cloud operations, and cloud security together for rapid cloud provisioning and management. Businesses can focus on taking their innovations to market fast without worrying about infrastructure and security.
3. What are the common cloud security threats? How does InviGrid mitigate these risks?
Yogita. A misconfigured server or open-to-public storage bucket or database or other service are like entry doors to the data or that service that can be easily exploited. In fact, cloud misconfiguration is 1 of top 3 reasons for increase in data breaches, according to this MIT report.
4. What is the significance of zero-day and zero-trust security in today’s digital world? How do these methods operate to limit prevalent security threats?
Yogita. Zero-day attack is when malicious actors are actively exploiting software vulnerabilities for which no patches are yet available.
Zero trust, on the other hand, is an approach to security – it is about ensuring there is implicit deny for all requests to access data or resource until authenticated and authorized. Today corporate data and asset can be anywhere, it can be on-prem, in cloud, in your cloud, in vendor or partner cloud, in SaaS applications, on mobile, or on the edge, basically data and assets are decentralized. This complexity necessitated the move away from “trust but verify,” which went well when all data and assets were in corporate data center and we had firewalls and DMZs, and once an authenticated user was inside the network, they had access to all resources.
Secure-by-design approach ensures that zero trust and defense-in-depth approaches based on threat modeling can now be implemented when the systems and cloud environments are being built. Doing so after the fact is extremely expensively and at best only a band-aid that can rip off easily.
5. Why is it important to impart the appropriate knowledge on cybersecurity in organizations? What role does governance play in this regard?
Yogita. Very good question! It is only human to make a mistake, goes the adage. Training and continuous learning and training is critical because weakest link in the chain is the human! This is actually where automation helps. InviGrid is an example of automation that can prevent cloud misconfigurations.
In other cases, continuously training, just in time learning is almost an expectation now. Malicious actors are using bots to constantly try open doors, open services, open endpoints, A mistaken click on a phishing link can lead to a ransomware attack or infostealer malware stealing your credentials locked away in that password manager or browser.
Governance, on the other hand – is about oversight – oversight to ensure that company’s objectives or goals are set, strategy to achieve those goals is executed well, and any risks to that strategy is mitigated. These risks include cybersecurity risk that can be systemic and put corporate goals of revenues, gross margin, or even survival at risk
6. Do you believe that strong leadership can drive business progression? What is your leadership approach?
Yogita. My style is more of a Visionary style. I want and expect the team to take ownership. I was lucky that my parents and my early bosses gave me full freedom to make my own decisions, to operate, to thrive. I try to pass this down to my team, expect them to become leaders and stewards of their domains. Leadership is not just top down; it can come from within from anyone who takes the initiative, continuously learn, become experts and teach, understand the company’s vision, mission and lead from the front.
7. The digital threat ecosystem is advancing fast. How should companies stay prepared during such situations?
Yogita. Technology is advancing at an unprecedented, exponential pace. In fact, we are witnessing history being written in front of our eyes! AI, GenAI, AGI, ASI, Quantum Computing all happening now. This creates lots of opportunities and many challenges, and we need informed people in all walks of like – from techies to lawyers to healthcare workers to ethicists.
Everybody should be constantly updating yourself not just to avoid becoming stagnant but to participate in this unprecedented era of technological advancement that is dramatically going to impact our lives.
We as technologists, as a human race, are making a lot of decisions today that will impact generations to come. It is not just how we treat security and our privacy but also social justice, fairness, ethics, and environment. We need informed people in companies, in government, in nonprofits, all making wise decisions for humanity.
Dive Into Another Expert Conversation:
