Capstone Winner Snapshot: Jyotsna Bhardwaj
Jyotsna Bhardwaj, ST class of '23.
Students in TLI's class of '23 have completed their capstone projects and are getting ready for graduation. We'd like to celebrate our hardworking grads by introducing some of them and telling you a bit about their backgrounds. Today we'd like to introduce Jyotsna Bhardwaj, winner for best capstone project for our Security Technologies cohort, "Zero Trust Framework for the Manufacturing Industry".
Jyotsna Bhardwaj is currently the Director of Cybersecurity Architecture at Boston Scientific, helping with the organization's mission to transform lives through innovative medical solutions.
As an emerging security leader in a large medical device corporation, Jyotsna chose to pursue a still elusive security paradigm in any industry - "zero trust." Titled "Zero Trust Framework for the Manufacturing Industry," her capstone project strives to bring coherence to technical complexity. Jyotsna was able to demonstrate her leadership skills not only through this project and during her time at TLI, but was also able to positively influence the direction of the corporation she works for.
"Zero Trust is still a niche space with no one model," Jyotsna said. "This is an excellent opportunity to put together a framework that works for manufacturing industries that are heavily regulated and, at the same time, have a lot of legacy infrastructure that requires a robust security strategy to protect them".
We asked Jyotsna a few questions about her time in the ST program, and she was kind enough to respond:
Q: How did you first hear about the TLI program?
A: I heard about TLI when I started to look for options for my MS, and the UMN TLI program was one of its kind that came up in my search, which had the perfect blend of Technical and leadership knowledge in Security.
Q: What kind of support have you received from your company while you've been in the program?
A: My company was very supportive throughout the program. I got full support from my CISO to take time to focus on my assignments and capstone. He was my technical advisor and supported me at every step.
Q: How easy was it to find a subject for the capstone project? What did your decision-making process look like?
A: Finding the capstone subject was difficult, but I have always been fascinated by the concept of Zero-Trust and wanted to do something for our company. After that, the decision-making was fairly easy.
Congratulations to Jyotsna for this honor!