Tarique Mustafa

Co-Founder, CEO/CTO | GC Cybersecurity

Tarique is Co-Founder and CEO/CTO of two AI-powered cybersecurity companies: GC Cybersecurity, Inc. and its data intelligence spinout, Chorology, Inc. A prolific inventor and internationally recognized authority in knowledge engineering and data cybersecurity, Tarique has spent his career applying autonomous AI technologies to solve complex, ultra-high-scale challenges across enterprise data-security — with deep expertise spanning cybersecurity, data leak prevention and AI data intelligence industries. His groundbreaking innovations and multiple USPTO patents have earned him global recognition, including frequent invitations to deliver keynote addresses at prestigious international security conferences and forums.

At GC Cybersecurity, Tarique architected the core AI algorithms powering the company's 4th and 5th generation fully autonomous data leak protection and exfiltration platform — among the most advanced platform of its kind. Prior to founding GC Cybersecurity and Chorology, he served as founding CEO/CTO of NexTier Networks, a Silicon Valley provider of award-winning Data Leak Prevention solutions. With over 20 years of technical leadership experience, Tarique has held senior roles at Symantec, DHL Airways IT, MCI WorldCom, EDS, Andes Networks, and Nevis Networks, where he served as Principal Architect and built industry-leading security products leveraging next-generation security monitoring, event correlation, IDS/IPS, and SSL/IPSec technologies.

Tarique holds multiple approved and pending patents with the USPTO and has authored numerous research publications spanning Information & Data Security, Computer & Network Security, Software Architecture, Database Technologies, and Artificial Intelligence. A recipient of the prestigious Rotary International Scholarship for doctoral studies in Computer Science at the University of Southern California (USC), Tarique also holds master’s degrees in engineering and computer science from USC, and a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering from NED University of Engineering & Technology.

Bhanu Panda

Co-Founder, President | GC Cybersecurity

Bhanu brings over two decades of leadership and success in Silicon Valley in Networking, Security and Storage. He has held leadership positions and was an early member at several successful startups, including Array Networks, Alteon WebSystems and Auspex Systems. Bhanu has extensive experience in driving an organization’s overall strategy, building a global partner ecosystem and driving customer success.

As Co-Founder and President of GC Cybersecurity, Bhanu is a member of the Board of Directors and is responsible for the company’s overall business operations, including Strategy, Sales, Business Development and Customer Success.

Prior to GC Cybersecurity, Bhanu served as VP of Worldwide Sales, Business Development & Services for Array Networks. He reorganized global sales efforts to deliver consistently superior results, leading to consecutive profitable quarters and years. Array had a successful IPO in 2009. He led the company into new regions in APAC and established Array as a leader in its market category.

Before Array, Bhanu was an early member and held management positions at Alteon WebSystems, where he built and led the Customer Advocacy team and contributed significantly to business development. Alteon was recognized for its customer satisfaction and services, had a hugely successful IPO and was acquired by Nortel Networks. Prior to Alteon, Bhanu managed the Customer Satisfaction organization at Auspex Systems, serving Fortune 500 clients.

Bhanu holds a Master’s degree in Computer Science from Jackson State University, Mississippi.

John Racioppi

EVP of Corporate Development | GC Cybersecurity

John brings to GC Cybersecurity over 30 years of leadership experience in the security, software and networking arenas. He has driven strategy and direction for multiple organizations, most recently serving as CEO of Enhanced Communications Delivery Systems (ECDS), a SaaS company focused on multi-channel messaging as a platform service.

Prior to ECDS, John served as General Manager of the Data Leak Prevention Group at Trend Micro, as well as AVP of the Enterprise Business Unit. He helped develop Trend Micro’s strategy in DLP and served on the team that acquired Provilla, Inc. While at Trend Micro, John led the project team focused on long-term strategy and direction. He has extensive functional experience in strategic planning, product assessment and planning, go-to-market strategies and revenue improvement.

John has been a leader in a variety of successful start-up organizations as well as large public corporations, including Trend Micro, Borland, IBM and AT&T, and early-stage companies including Infravio, Moonlight Systems, Lutris and DASCOM. He also has consulting experience as part of Ernst & Young’s Telecommunications and Network consulting practice, and has led the strategy and planning activities of several global software vendors as they assessed new market opportunities.

John received his MBA from the University of Pittsburgh.

Shakuntala Addepalli

Vice President of Product, Program and Quality | GC Cybersecurity

Shakuntala is a Senior Technical Product Leader with over 20 years’ experience in a wide range of engineering, and project management roles executing complex technical projects. Her professional specialties include Cybersecurity, WAN Optimization solutions, and Storage Networking. Her perseverance, go getter attitude, and being able to deal with ambiguity, have helped her effectively lead geographically dispersed, multi-disciplinary teams through her detail-focused planning, design and execution of large projects while achieving time sensitive milestones.

Shakuntala is currently serving as Vice President of Product, Program and Quality for GC Cybersecurity, Inc., and is responsible for GC Cybersecurity’s Information Security Enforcer product lines (ISE). Shakuntala spends her time creating requirements, roadmaps, managing resources, project schedules, for ISE product releases. Some of her initiatives include improvements in CI/CD pipeline, High availability, Containerization of ISE product, DevOps, Release management and Quality automation.

Prior to GC Cybersecurity, Shakuntala held senior manager roles at Symantec and Broadcom where she leveraged her professional expertise in Proxies, Cloud Web Security, and CASB. As a quality leader, Shakuntala defined cloud services and test strategies that seamlessly drove new and existing customer adoption of SaaS products based on cloud transformation journeys.

Shakuntala started her career working as a principal engineer at Tacit Corporation acquired by Packeteer, responsible for quality assurance teams and as a senior quality manager at Blue Coat Systems directing quality teams for the PacketShaper and Blue Coat ProxySG product lines. Her strategic agility, decision quality and problem-solving competencies helped deliver PacketShaper S-series product line which was the first 10Gbps full-duplex multi-core software design with full application classification and QoS control. This new product line contributed significantly to revenue and had a high conversion rate to replace the legacy PSOS systems.

Shakuntala holds an MS in Software Engineering from Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Pilani.

Wasim Azhar

Chief Software Architect | GC Cybersecurity

Wasim is currently the Chief Software Architect for GC Cybersecurity’s industry leading Information Security Enforcer (ISE™). With more than 20 years of industry experience in full stack applications, network protocols, messaging infrastructure and system integration, Wasim oversees design and development of core infrastructure for GC Cybersecurity’s (ISE™) product.

Wasim is an accomplished software engineer with demonstrated experience developing highly scalable enterprise systems and web applications in cybersecurity, data protection, and networking including ultra-high-use transaction processing systems of large global banks. 

Prior to GC Cybersecurity, Wasim served as a senior software and solutions engineer at GMBH Dubai, where he developed solutions for document emulation engines, document generation, and systems for large-scale content management integrated with hundreds of third-party systems deployed globally. Wasim played key role in developing large-scale immigration systems for the UAE government at Emaratech, FZ LLC, and customized third-party financial applications for high-scale transaction processing at the Bank of Abu Dhabi.

Prior to his professional experiences in Dubai, UAE, Wasim served as a principal software engineer for Cambridge Docs, Pvt. Ltd in Pakistan and started his career as a software engineer at ESP Ltd, in Pakistan developing peer-to-peer file sharing systems and enterprise data-sharing systems in high-scale environments.  Wasim holds a Master’s Degree in Computer Science from IQRA University, Pakistan and a Bachelor’s Degree in Business and Commerce at the University of the Punjab, Pakistan.

Ramu Denduluri

Vice President of Systems Engineering | GC Cybersecurity

Ramu Denduluri is a seasoned technology executive with over 29 years of experience spanning cybersecurity, networking, software engineering, and enterprise technology solutions.

As Vice President of Systems Engineering at GC Cybersecurity, Ramu leads customer-facing engineering, technical delivery, and global delivery operations for the company's product portfolio. He oversees product deployments, proof-of-concept initiatives, customer and partner enablement, technical escalations, and quality assurance, ensuring successful implementation and delivery of the company's solutions.

Prior to joining GC Cybersecurity, Ramu held senior technical and engineering roles at leading technology organizations, including Cisco Systems and Nortel Networks, as well as several emerging technology companies. His extensive experience in networking, systems engineering, and software development underpins his expertise in delivering complex enterprise technology solutions.

Ramu holds a Master of Science in Software Engineering from San Jose State University, along with a Master of Computer Applications and a Postgraduate Diploma in Computer Applications from Osmania University.

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