skip to main content
Vikram Phatak
Vikram Phatak
01:14

Vikram Phatak

NSS Labs

Austin, TX USA

"Honor your own rhythm...everybody got started somewhere."

Career Roadmap

Vikram's work combines: Engineering, Technology, and Learning / Being Challenged

See more careers and stories that connect to your interests.

Take Roadmap Quiz

Day In The Life

CEO

I am one of the information security industry's foremost thought leaders on threat protection.

00:46

Day In The Life Of A Cybersecurity CEO

My Day to Day

I am responsible for leading the company’s endeavors to advance transparency and accountability within the cybersecurity industry.

Skills & Education

Advice for getting started

Even though I had always been interested in computers and intended to study that in school, I took what my dad said to heart and ended up majoring in economics. This didn't stop me from keeping my passion for computers as a hobby. I was a part of a lot of hacker groups online and spent a lot of time in the computer lab. A lot of how I got to where I am now working in IT is due to luck. I just kept following my interests after college until I figured out a way to make money doing what I love.

Here's the path I took:

  • High School

  • Bachelor's Degree

    University of California, Los Angeles

  • Graduate Degree

    Economics, General

    Temple University

Here's the path I recommend for someone who wants to be an Information Security Analysts:

High School

Bachelor's Degree: Information Technology

Learn more about different paths to this career

Life & Career Milestones

My path in life took a while to figure out

  • 1.

    His dad was a professor, and one night, while Vikram was playing with his computer, he overloaded the memory and broke the machine.

  • 2.

    He stayed up all night teaching himself how to fix the computer from scratch so his dad wouldn’t find out, and that was the beginning of his interest in information technology.

  • 3.

    When he went to college, he wanted to go into IT, but his dad told him that he didn’t want to become the stereotype of the IT guy who sat in the back of the office and didn’t have friends.

  • 4.

    Instead, he studied economics, but he spent all of his free time in the computer lab participating in hacking communities.

  • 5.

    While he was trying to break into the world of tech, he had to take some odd jobs to support his family, including washing dishes in the communicable diseases wing of the hospital.

  • 6.

    He says that having terrible jobs like that in his rearview mirror motivated him to work as hard as he could at his IT jobs because he never wanted to go back to that life.

  • 7.

    Says that his career in cybersecurity was by no means planned—he just followed something that he liked to do, he kept at it, and eventually he found a way to make money doing it.

  • 8.

    Now works as CEO of NSS Labs, which, among other things, conducts third-party assessments of network security products to help consumers buy the best software.

Defining Moments

How I responded to discouragement

  • THE NOISE

    Messages from Parents:

    You don't want to be the IT guy. He's the weird guy in the back of the room that no one cares about.

  • How I responded:

    Even though I had always been interested in computers and intended to study that in school, I took what my dad said to heart and ended up majoring in economics. This didn't stop me from keeping my passion for computers as a hobby. I was a part of a lot of hacker groups online and spent a lot of time in the computer lab. A lot of how I got to where I am now working in IT is due to luck. I just kept following my interests after college until I figured out a way to make money doing what I love.

Experiences and challenges that shaped me

Click to expand

  • I got married young and had no money, so I worked odd jobs trying to make ends meat and work my way up the ladder.