Cybersecurity Expert
Inventing a Safer, More Secure Internet
When Yahoo uncovered what’s now known as the largest data breach in history, Karan Dwivedi (ENG 2016) was working at its epicenter as a security engineer. He was part of the team tasked with figuring out how 3 billion Yahoo accounts were compromised and how to stop the breach from happening again. In this most extreme of circumstances, Karan forged his skills as a cybersecurity expert.
“I interned at Yahoo while at CMU, so I knew the infrastructure,” he says. “My role there was to figure out what sort of evidence about the breach existed, what could we use and what was valuable. I became trusted for my technical expertise, and the CEO personally thanked me.”
Now, Karan is a security engineering leader at Google. He’s led large-scale security projects at Google and Yahoo for products including Google Search, Google Assistant, Yahoo Mail, Yahoo Finance, Flickr and more. He’s improved the safety of over 1 billion user accounts across these platforms.
The scope of his expertise extends even further through his contributions to CVSS 4.0, the internet standard for scoring vulnerabilities. He was one of the experts tapped to develop the guidelines that almost all companies use to evaluate the severity of security flaws in their computing systems. He was also named a 40 under 40 honoree in 2024 by Silicon Valley Business Journal.
Karan’s recent efforts focus on the next generation of cybersecurity professionals. In addition to one-on-one coaching, he wrote a book called “Kickstart Your Security Engineering Career” and he is one of the online expert instructors in the Google Cybersecurity Certificate program.
It adds up to a focused effort that comes from a personal motivation for Karan.
“As a teenager, I was chatting online and some stranger threatened to take over my profiles. I couldn't sleep that night,” he says. “Then I got curious about how to defend myself, which led me to study computer science. Now, I don't want anybody to be afraid of using technology. A safe, secure internet by default is my vision, and I’m working toward it by empowering others in the field. I have a limited time on planet Earth, and I want to spend it this way.”
Story by Elizabeth Speed