Wasantha Perera: Sculpting New Cybersecurity Benchmarks

In a ceaseless endeavor for progress, we humans often neglect the fact that passion acts as an accelerator to the composition of our excellence. It is fuel to a furnace of hard-work where transcendent ideas are shaped.

To utilize this passion, and turn it into profits and goodwill, is an active trait which an efficient business leader possesses. We at Insights Success, in our endeavor to bring into spotlight, The 10 Most Influential Business Leaders In Sri Lanka 2019, have come across a commendable list of prolific business leaders. These leaders have time and again striven to uphold the mission of their respective organizations and delivered excellence through their leadership, skills and compassion.

One among such proficient leaders is Wasantha Perera, the Founder and CEO of CryptoGen. Being instrumental in driving the largest Cybersecurity solution provider today in Sri Lanka with an overall revenue of US$13 Million, and many other business ventures, Wasantha has earned himself the title of a Powerful Influencer in the SriLanka Cybersecurity Industry.

In the initial phase of his career, just after his graduation, Wasantha was a systems engineer with a company called Enterprise Technology. He then moved in to Millennium IT as Consulting Engineer, company which developed the world’s fastest trading platform. In his following path to progress, he provided his service as the Head of Security at N-able, a part of Hemas Group and later he was appointed as the Head of Information Security and Compliance for Colombo Stock Exchange, the national stock exchange in Srilanka. In 2015 at the age of 34, he founded CryptoGen, and the company took over the local Cyber Security Market as a game changer with various partnerships, new business models, consultancy and advisory.

In 2014, Wasantha was appointed as a board advisory council member for the International Information System Security Certification Consortium (ISC)2, the world’s leading Cybersecurity Professional Organization. He has received many global awards in China and United States for the outstanding contribution he has made to build the Cyber Security workforce in the SriLankan community.

Wasantha has a plethora of awards under his name for his contributions to the world of Cybersecurity. A few of them are; the Presidents Award 2014 from (ISC)2 and Security Leadership award in Beijing China. He was also nominated as one of the Top 10 Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) candidates in 2015 in the award ceremony by EC-Council hosted in Atlanta.

Crediting his success and excellence to his family, Wasantha expresses, “My parents—father an engineer and mother a house wife—didn’t have any background of running businesses. But they coached me to learn the core fundamentals of life to survive in any challenging atmosphere. My sister has always guided me to the right direction in bringing peace in my world, and finally my wife for standing beside me and my three year old son Sithuka who is an icon of courage and survival for my journey.”

At Zeniths of Excellence

Coming to CryptoGen, expressing his views on how the company caters to the market requirements, Wasantha says, “Our business is highly dependent on trust. In addition to maintaining corporate clients, we’re responsible for building trust between them and their customers. That’s the essence of Cybersecurity.”

Wasantha is of the opinion that as digital transformation gathers momentum, it is the most appropriate time for organizations to reflect on their security transformation. In accordance with this, he states that during an era where Cyber attackers, emerging techniques such as machine learning and artificial intelligence are being used to learn and launch disruptive activities, CryptoGen continuously works with the world’s leading Cybersecurity technology providers to defend against such adversaries.

Sharing accounts of the challenges he faced while building the company from foundations, Wasantha expresses, “CryptoGen started with the theme ‘Start Small Dream Big and Grow Fast’. Even today the company doesn’t have any external investor and is sustaining with zero bank debt.”

He also states, “Initially none of the banks or large organizations wanted to work with CryptoGen with the nature of the business. But we assured continuous trust from the smallest transaction and later developed into a multi-million portfolio. I have founded small Sri Lankan companies, and have seen them being acquired by larger ones with good investments, and witnessed what happens as a result. But I was determined to keep CryptoGen’s entrepreneurial spirit, no matter how large and successful it becomes. I always believed on my crown jewels, my employees, during all types of storms in various weather conditions.”

Beholding the Future

Wasantha believes that Cybersecurity will become a Market worth $200+ Billion by 2023 around the globe. Pertaining to this, CryptoGen secures around $3.5+ million worth business per year in a small country like Sri Lanka. “With our new managed service and Security Operations Centre equipped with latest innovations, our plan is to explore opportunities outside the region with many differentiation factors to cover $10+ million transactions in next 2 years,” states Wasantha.

He also believes that Automation and Machine Learning are creating new possibilities in threat prediction and prevention, so highest priority will be given any initiative associated with these game changers.

In his advice to the emerging entrepreneurs, Wasantha says, “Believe in yourself, explore a real challenge where others struggle, and then address it with a trust. Your hidden capacity and willingness to develop, organize and manage a business venture along with any of its risks in order to make the world a better and safer place has to be your ultimate objective.”