Cybersecurity has never been just about firewalls, encryption, or compliance checklists. At its core, it’s about trust—the kind that businesses need to safeguard customers, innovate boldly, and operate without fear. Few leaders have redefined this responsibility as powerfully as Rinki Sethi. Her career is a masterclass in resilience and reinvention, proving that the role of a CISO is not simply about guarding systems, but about inspiring confidence, shaping culture, and enabling business growth at scale.
From Early Curiosity to Courageous Beginnings
Rinki’s journey into security began with an act of curiosity—and defiance. As a teenager in Cupertino, she discovered her father had quietly installed a keylogger to track her online activity. Instead of panicking, she turned the situation into an experiment. She wrote a program to detect and remove the software. That moment sparked more than a personal victory; it planted the seed for a lifelong career of defending systems by outsmarting threats.
Pursuing that spark, Rinki earned her B.S. in Computer Science Engineering at UC Davis and later, an M.S. in Information Security. What started as a teenage hack became the foundation of a professional journey defined by courage, foresight, and a relentless drive to learn.
Climbing the Ranks: Building Security at Scale
Her career began with a formative opportunity at PG&E, where she first dipped her toes into cybersecurity. From there, she advanced into leadership positions at Walmart.com and eBay, navigating the complexity of securing global operations. Each role tested her ability to translate technical defenses into scalable business safeguards.
At Intuit, she shifted her focus to product security, embedding trust into the very architecture of consumer-facing platforms. That experience gave her a front-row seat to the evolution of cloud computing and the new challenges it posed for protecting data.
Her next move, to Palo Alto Networks, brought her closer to the battleground of enterprise defense. Here, she led security operations and incident response, building red teams to simulate attacks before adversaries could exploit weaknesses. Later, at IBM, she expanded her focus to security at massive global scale—helping an organization with thousands of employees across the world stay resilient against emerging threats.
Transforming Rubrik and Securing Twitter
When Rubrik faced a high-profile security incident, Rinki stepped in as VP and CISO to rebuild its trust. She didn’t just patch systems—she rebuilt a culture of security, creating frameworks that would sustain the company through its rapid growth and IPO journey.
Her appointment at Twitter in 2020 marked a turning point, both for her and the company. The platform had just weathered a breach that compromised some of the most influential accounts in the world. Rebuilding confidence wasn’t just about fixing systems—it was about reestablishing the credibility of a platform millions depended on for information.
Rinki rose to the challenge by focusing on people as much as processes. She championed the philosophy that security succeeds when it becomes a shared responsibility, not a siloed function. Under her leadership, security at Twitter became less about reactive firefighting and more about proactive resilience.
Championing Diversity and Shaping the Future
Beyond the boardroom, Rinki has been a force for change in how the industry develops talent. At Palo Alto Networks, she helped design cybersecurity badges for the Girl Scouts, sparking early interest in the field among young girls. Her mentorship has consistently emphasized that diversity is not just about gender—it’s about fostering varied perspectives that can solve complex, evolving threats.
Her commitment to diversity extends into governance, too. She has served on the boards of companies like ForgeRock and Vaultree, while also advising startups seeking to redefine what security looks like in the age of AI and cloud transformation.
Now at Upwind: Real-Time Security in Motion
In 2025, Rinki took on the role of Chief Security Officer at Upwind, a fast-rising cloud security company tackling one of the toughest challenges for modern enterprises: protecting workloads in real time. Drawing on her experience as a CISO, she was quick to identify one of the industry’s biggest gaps—most tools overwhelm teams with dashboards and alerts, but fail to empower real-time action.
At Upwind, her vision is to flip the script—making security less about noise and more about clarity. Her leadership is helping enterprises move from a reactive posture to one where decisions are made instantly, based on live runtime data. It’s a shift that resonates with every business leader trying to balance agility with safety in an increasingly digital-first economy.
Legacy in Motion: Strategy, Inclusion, and Vision
Rinki Sethi’s career embodies the evolution of cybersecurity leadership. She has built programs from scratch, rescued companies in crisis, and influenced industry-wide conversations on diversity and trust. Yet her impact isn’t confined to the companies she’s worked with. It lies in how she has redefined what it means to lead—balancing technical depth with human connection, strategy with empathy, and urgency with foresight.
For business leaders, her journey underscores a new truth: cybersecurity is no longer just a technical function—it is a strategic enabler of growth, credibility, and innovation. By embedding trust at every stage, by elevating culture alongside controls, and by investing in diversity of thought, Rinki has set a new standard for what modern security leadership looks like.
And as she continues her journey at the forefront of innovation, her story remains a reminder that true security leaders don’t just defend the present—they build the future.
