5Tattva believes effective cybersecurity cannot be built around technology alone. Atul Luthra, CEO, Zeroday Ops & Co-Founder, 5Tattva believes that to be effective, cybersecurity has to bring together five interconnected dimensions: People, Process, Technology, Governance and Resilience. In an exclusive conversation with Rajneesh De, Group Editor, APAC Media & CXO Media, Luthra informs that for 5Tattva, the real measure of cybersecurity maturity is how well these five dimensions work together to reduce risk and keep the business resilient.
What solutions and services are currently part of the 5Tattva portfolio, and what are their key use cases?
At 5Tattva, we take a comprehensive approach to cybersecurity, covering the entire lifecycle from identifying vulnerabilities and assessing risks to strengthening controls, monitoring environments and responding to incidents. Our portfolio covers Vulnerability Assessment and Penetration Testing (VAPT), Red Teaming, Cloud Security, Application Security, DevSecOps, 24×7 Security Operations Centre (SOC) services, Digital Forensics and Incident Response (DFIR), risk assessment, data privacy and compliance advisory, and cybersecurity audits including PCI DSS, SOC 2 and CERT-In regulated audits.
The key use cases vary depending on an organisation’s security maturity and business environment. VAPT helps organisations identify and validate vulnerabilities across web, mobile, API, cloud and network environments, while Red Teaming evaluates how effectively an organisation can withstand real-world attack scenarios. Cybersecurity audits such as PCI DSS, SOC 2 and CERT-In assessments help organisations demonstrate that their controls are designed and operating effectively, and meet the expectations of regulators, customers and partners. Our 24×7 SOC and managed security capabilities provide continuous monitoring and response, while DFIR helps organisations investigate and respond to security incidents.
Our objective is to bring these capabilities together so organisations can move from simply identifying security gaps to actively reducing risk and improving resilience.
What are the Five Tattva’s (Elements) around cybersecurity that 5Tattva evangelizes?
At 5Tattva, we believe effective cybersecurity cannot be built around technology alone. It has to bring together five interconnected dimensions: People, Process, Technology, Governance and Resilience.
People addresses the human element of security – awareness, accountability and the ability of employees and security teams to make the right decisions. Process ensures that security is structured, repeatable and measurable rather than dependent on individual actions. Technology provides the capabilities needed to prevent, detect and respond to threats. Governance connects cybersecurity with business priorities, risk management and accountability. And Resilience focuses on an organisation’s ability to detect, respond, recover and continue operations when an incident occurs.
The key is that none of these can work effectively in isolation. Strong technology cannot compensate for weak processes, poor governance or an unprepared workforce. For us, the real measure of cybersecurity maturity is how well these five dimensions work together to reduce risk and keep the business resilient.
As enterprises expand across cloud, application and on-premises environments, how does 5Tattva recommend continuous vulnerability identification, stronger controls and effective risk management?
The first step is to stop viewing vulnerability management as a Quarterly or annual exercise. As enterprises expand across cloud, applications, APIs and on-premises infrastructure, their attack surface is constantly changing. Organisations need continuous visibility into assets, vulnerabilities, identities and configurations, supported by regular security testing and monitoring.
We also recommend prioritising vulnerabilities based on business impact and exploitability, rather than relying only on severity scores. The key is to establish a continuous cycle of identifying exposures, assessing their business impact, prioritising remediation, validating the fixes and monitoring for new risks. This makes vulnerability management a business-risk function, not just a technical exercise.
What are 5Tattva’s recommendations for best practices to build resilient and compliance-driven security environments? How have conversations with CISOs evolved?
Our recommendation is to treat compliance as a security baseline, not the security destination. Organisations need clear ownership of security, visibility into their critical assets and data, strong identity controls, continuous vulnerability management, security monitoring and tested incident-response processes. Equally important is maintaining evidence that these controls are working throughout the year, rather than preparing for an audit at the last minute.
Our conversations with CISOs reflect this shift. The discussion is increasingly moving from “How do we pass the audit?” to “How do we continuously demonstrate that our controls are working?” CISOs are looking for measurable risk reduction, greater visibility and stronger resilience against both regulatory and business scrutiny.
How do you see the growing need to move beyond periodic audits and adopt a continuous cybersecurity strategy?
Periodic audits provide an important point-in-time view, but the threat environment changes much faster than an annual audit cycle. New applications can be deployed, cloud configurations can change, vulnerabilities can emerge and attack techniques can evolve within days. This makes continuous security essential. Organisations need an ongoing cycle of identify, assess, protect, monitor, respond and improve, bringing vulnerability management, risk assessment, security monitoring and incident response closer together.
At 5Tattva, we do not see continuous security as a replacement for periodic assessments. Rather, it complements them by providing visibility between assessments.
Ultimately, organisations should be able to answer three questions at any point in time: What is exposed? What is the risk? And what are we doing about it?
What are 5Tattva’s key pillars of its go-to-market strategy in India, and what initiatives support this strategy?
Our strategy is built around five pillars: deep cybersecurity expertise, risk and compliance led security, offensive security and technical assurance, managed and continuous security services, and a strong ecosystem approach. We are focused on helping organisations address cybersecurity as a business-risk issue, particularly as cloud adoption, AI and regulatory expectations reshape the threat landscape.
Our engagement spans security assessments, offensive security, risk management, governance and managed security, allowing us to work with organisations at different stages of their security journey. Alongside this, we are investing in CISO engagement, industry conversations, cybersecurity awareness and strategic partnerships. Our objective is to build long-term relationships rather than operate as a transactional security service provider.
What is the structure of 5Tattva’s partner ecosystem in India?
We see partnerships as an important part of building a stronger cybersecurity ecosystem. Our approach is not simply about reselling technology; it is about bringing together technology, specialist expertise and implementation capabilities to address a customer’s specific security requirements. Our ecosystem includes technology and security solution providers, consulting relationships, industry networks and specialized cybersecurity partners. Depending on the customer’s maturity and requirements, these relationships can complement our capabilities across assessment, security implementation, monitoring and managed services.
The focus is on creating meaningful customer outcomes rather than building a partner network purely for scale. We believe the strongest partnerships are those that bring complementary expertise and help organisations address cybersecurity more effectively.
What are 5Tattva’s key differentiators compared with other cybersecurity competitors in India?
Our key differentiator is the ability to connect cybersecurity assessment, offensive security, risk management, compliance and practical remediation rather than treating them as isolated activities. Identifying a vulnerability is only the beginning. Organisations also need to understand how exploitable it is, what business asset it affects, how urgently it needs to be addressed and whether remediation has actually reduced the risk.
We also bring experienced security practitioners into engagements across assessment, testing and managed security. Increasingly, our focus is on continuous outcomes, helping customers move from simply identifying issues or generating alerts to prioritising risks, investigating threats and taking corrective action. In simple terms, we don’t just identify the problem; we help organisations understand the risk and act on it.
Which industry verticals are witnessing maximum traction for 5Tattva, and what are the key use cases?
We are seeing strong demand across sectors, because cyber-attacks are not restricted to any vertical and regulation now applies to every industry in some form or another. Demand is particularly visible where cybersecurity, regulatory expectations and customer trust are closely connected. Financial services and fintech, technology and SaaS, BPO, healthcare, travel and hospitality, manufacturing, retail, and other digitally dependent businesses, but the underlying drivers are common to all of them. In financial services and fintech, key requirements include security assessments, penetration testing, vulnerability management, risk assessment and continuous monitoring.
Technology and SaaS companies are increasingly focused on application and API security, cloud security, data protection and meeting customer security expectations. Other sectors follow the same pattern with different emphasis, shaped by the regulations they fall under and the data they hold.
While the use cases differ by sector, the broader trend is consistent: organisations are moving away from fragmented security activities towards a more integrated and continuously managed security posture, with greater emphasis on measurable risk reduction and resilience.
