Dhanush Nair | Cybersecurity Professional

Experience

CTF Developer @ Cloud Village

Remote January 2025 - Present

Challenge Architecture: Architect and deploy 18+ cloud security challenges (AWS, Azure, GCP) for 5,000+ participants at DEF CON, RSA, BSides and OOTB.
Infrastructure Automation: Reduced deployment overhead by 90% using Terraform and CI/CD pipelines for rapid provisioning.
Vulnerability QC: Engineer logic flaws and data exposure scenarios; perform QA/QC to identify and patch 5+ critical vulnerabilities pre-launch.
Offensive Techniques: Designed challenges involving IAM abuse, IDOR, misconfigured cloud storage, SSRF-style access paths, and logic flaws.

Cybersecurity Intern @ Capgemini

Mumbai, India March 2023 – Jun 2023

Asset Security: Integrated Qualys CMDB, optimizing asset tracking and improving incident response speed by 25%.
Training: Trained 25 staff on security fundamentals, increasing post-training assessment scores by 40%.
Compliance & GRC: Executed quarterly GRC audits on $2M+ infrastructure, identifying risk gaps and ensuring regulatory adherence.

Cybersecurity Tutor @ Sansbrix

Remote Jan 2022 – March 2022

Curriculum Design: Led interactive sessions on OWASP Top 10 exploitation and defense for aspiring professionals.
Content Creation: Created a 20-module video curriculum to simplify complex security concepts.
Mentoring:Mentored students in fundamental cybersecurity principles, fostering hands-on engagement through practical exercises.

Cybersecurity Intern @ VIEH Group

Remote Sept 2021 - Dec 2021

Directed a group project that culminated in the creation of the Crime Investigation Framework, which streamlined incident response processes by 30%, significantly reducing resolution times for security incidents across the organization.
Conducted Capture The Flag (CTF) challenges, strengthening vulnerability exploitation and ethical hacking skills.
Spearheaded a cybersecurity awareness program, educating participants on threat prevention and digital hygiene.

Education

University of Maryland, College Park

Masters of Engineering in Cybersecurity | May 2025

Relevant Coursework: Hacking of C and Unix binaries, Reverse Engineering, Network Security, Cloud security, Penetration Testing, Secure Software Engineering, Digital forensics and Incident Response, Threat Modeling and Cryptography.

SRM University

Bachelors in Computer Science Engineering | June 2023

Talks and other Highlights

Member, Lil L3ak	Recently joined the Lil L3ak CTF team, looking forward to play more CTF's with them.
WiCyS Member	Part of the Women in Cybersecurity (WiCyS) Member Community.
Speaker at OWASP Mumbai	Presented a technical talk on malware analysis covering Windows internals, PE format, static/dynamic analysis, encryption techniques, and CTF case studies, with a live demo using industry tools. You can find the recording and the slides here.
Member, UMD Cybersecurity Club	Actively participate in CTF challenges, enhancing practical cybersecurity skills. Contributed to the design and development of CTF challenges to educate and engage the cybersecurity community.