Deepen Desai

Deepen Desai is the EVP, Chief Security Officer of Zscaler.

Career path

Desai's career in security traces to 2002, when he was working on a master's degree at San Jose State University and planning to become a software engineer. He became curious after noticing that roommates were cheating in an online video game, and began examining the Windows environment the game used. That curiosity led him to write an AntiCheat program, which he sold to a gaming league. As he has described it, he "ended up selling my program to one of the gaming leagues while I was doing my master's degree – and that was my first experience in the field of security."

His early roles involved vulnerability exploits, writing detections, zero-day vulnerability analysis and reverse engineering. After about five years he moved into his first leadership role, focused on malware and antivirus work at the network layer, and he also gained experience building products and developing sandboxing technology. Before joining Zscaler, Desai held security leadership roles at Dell SonicWALL, spending seven years there.

Desai joined Zscaler in 2014. At the company he has held the titles of CISO and VP, Security Research, and later Global Chief Information Security Officer and Head of Security Research, before being named EVP, Chief Security Officer.

Remit

As Chief Security Officer, Desai runs Zscaler's global security research operations and works with the product group to keep the Zscaler platform and services secure. He is also responsible for driving new cyber innovations at Zscaler and currently leads corporate and product security.

Talks and published work

Desai has presented on targeted ransomware, covering its three stages, prevalent ransomware families and how Zscaler helps prevent such attacks. He was scheduled to deliver the keynote How Zero Trust and AI Enable Innovation That Outpaces Adversaries at the Southern California CISO Executive Summit. In November 2026, he authored the Zscaler CXO Monthly Roundup covering October 2026. He has also contributed to Dark Reading, including the article Cybercrime Shows No Signs of Slowing Down, co-authored with Emily Laufer.