Indian budget hotel chain OYO is beefing up the cyber security of its platform with the appointment of Prakash Padariya as chief information security officer (CISO).
In this role, he will helm OYO’s security strategy globally as the company looks to ramp up international expansion.
OYO offers more than 40 integrated products and solutions to customers who operate over 157,000 hotel and home storefronts across India, Europe, Southeast Asia (SEA) and 35 other countries.
Padariya, who will report to Ankit Mathuria, the company’s chief technology officer (CTO), will be responsible for leveraging technologies such as big data analytics and artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance cyber security functions from the ground up.
He joins OYO from the Netherlands-headquartered online payment solutions provider PayU, where he had a similar role.
Padariya has more than 19 years of experience across different geographies with expertise in corporate security consulting, cyber security, cyber warfare, vulnerability assessment, surveillance audits and law enforcement cyber crime prevention, among others, OYO said in a statement.
Besides PayU, Padariya has worked in senior management roles at GE, Royal Bank of Scotland, IBM, Target Corporation and Accenture.
Padariya said he was “super excited to join OYO” when travel is transforming and demand is picking up.
“I can’t wait to start developing solutions to enhance the maturity of all of OYO’s products to the next level of security and privacy," he said.
Mathuria said that for OYO, data privacy and security are at the “core of how we build technology”.
“We believe in working with industry experts who can best lead the company’s cyber security functions with the help of AI and big data analytics,” Mathuria said.
