Amarasiri brings extensive experience of creating transformational cyber programs for the banking and insurance industries

MENLO PARK, CA – December 20, 2017 – Samitha Amarasiri has joined global consulting firm Protiviti as a managing director in its Security and Privacy consulting practice.

 

Based in New York City, he serves clients nationally within the banking and insurance industries, and locally within the New York City metro area. Amarasiri primarily focuses on enhancing clients’ cybersecurity programs to effectively combat cyber threats and efficiently demonstrate regulatory compliance.

Amarasiri brings more than 20 years of experience to the firm, with particular expertise in cybersecurity program strategy, identity and access management, data privacy and protection, regulatory compliance, breach response and cyber crisis management. He also has extensive experience in automating manual risk management processes and enabling organizations to safely embrace technology innovation such as cloud, big data and mobile computing.

Amarasiri recently served as cybersecurity program leader at a Big Four accounting firm, delivering transformational cybersecurity programs to domestic and international banks, multi-national insurance conglomerates and financial regulatory organizations. Prior to this, he gained extensive knowledge of the financial services industry as head of Financial Services Data and Analytics for Booz Allen Hamilton. Earlier in his career, Amarasiri also served as the global head of cybersecurity and technology risk engineering for Goldman Sachs and as global head of identity and access management and head of secure SDLC and test data management for Morgan Stanley.

“Along with the growing trend of digital business model transformations that leverage digital payments, we see the improvement of cybersecurity and privacy performance continuing to be at the forefront of our banking and insurance clients,” said Kurt Underwood, managing director with Protiviti and leader of its global technology consulting practice. “Samitha brings deep expertise in cybersecurity program transformation within these industries to help our clients proactively tackle cyber threats, using Protiviti’s comprehensive, risk-based approach.”

Amarasiri holds a master’s degree in electrical engineering and a bachelor’s degree in computer engineering from Kansas State University. He is a Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP) and a Payment Card Industry Qualified Security Assessor (PCI-QSA).