2024 Year Review and thoughts

 My review of 2024. 

The year was a mixed bag with a overall positive outlook and a few hiccups.

My ratings on key parameters 

  • Health - Average 
  • Family - Good 
  • Professional - Good 
  • Career - Good 
  • Finances - Average 
  1. Health -  My health has been a mixed bag with several notable improvements and some setbacks.
    1. Exercise - I was able to regularly attend Gym and do strength training.  Due to improved leg strength I was able to run a 10 k run in Dec in a time of 67 mins. I was 40th out of 120 runners in the Veteran category which I am satisfied with keeping in mind the several issues I had been having at the start of the year. 
    2. Gut Health : My stomach and gut issues continued which led me to a take a nutritionist led meal plan. This has helped but I still continue to have gas and loose motions intermittently  and outside food does not suit me at all. The worry is that my weight has reduced from 68 Kg to 63 Kg in last 6 months. However belly fat has reduced and muscle mass is slowly increasing.  
    3. Nutrition: I have started following the diet plan and left Gluten, Dairy and controlled my sugar intake. This has helped improve my markers and also with stomach issues. I am not sure of taking Probiotics but need to continue considering my gut issues. 
    4. Mental Strength : I have focused on and off on doing meditation and Pranayam but not been regular with it. Consistency is the key to progress here. This would  be my biggest focus area in 2025. 
    5. Markers :  I was able to reduce my Total Cholesterol to 200 by eating healthy food and cutting down on sugar, processed food. My Vitamin D3 has also risen to 52 but Vit B12 continues to be low. 
  2. Family 
    1. Tanuja and I - We were fortunate to be able to spend time with each other despite our work schedules. We got time to play tennis and travel together. We are fortunate to live in a good house and an area in Bangalore.
    2. Krish and I - I continue to work to spend time with Krish and support him in his journey without being interfering. We are fortunate to have him during both summer and winter breaks and get to spend time with him.  
    3. Simba - Our Golden retriever bundle of joy has turned four and is as naughty as he was in 2020 when we brought him home for the first time. The best thing to happen this year was that we were able to find a family to keep him for the time we had gone to US trip to meet Krish our son. 
  3. Professional - Good 
    1. I have now completed over 7 years in Corporate life and have been very fortunate to work with great people and companies with a 4 year stint at Nykaa and now over an year at Flipkart. This is pretty good place to be in and I am happy with the path which my career has taken in the corporate life. 
    2. I am also very satisfied and passionate about cyber security my core field. Unlike Army were my area was very broad and some times too generic I am getting to work in a specialised role. 
    3. 2024 was  a good year for me as I also started reporting to Walmart leadership and am getting an international exposure.  I get to interact and build connect with several leaders at Walmart. 
    4. Additionally I got a chance to attend several trainings and interact with business leaders in Flipkart which has really helped improve my business understanding and connect with management and brief at board level. 
    5. I also attended the Microsoft CISO Leadership summit in Seattle which was a first for me and a great exposure interacting with senior CISOs and security leaders. 
  4. Personal Development  
    1. While I did well at work, my own professional development outside work did not enhance significantly. While, I attended several conference including Gartner, Sparkcon and Microsoft CISO summit I was not able to speak at a major conference. 
    2. I did speak at several forum meets and local chapter  events organised at Flipkart. 
      1. “Soft skills for a Security Professional” at a BiOS forum event at Flipkart 
      2. “Cloud Security Journey” at CSA, Bangalore Chapter at Myntra Office 
      3. Panel Discussion on Cloud Security at AISS -2024, DSCI’s annual conference held in Gurgaon. 
    3. I continued my mentoring work with weekend mentoring sessions with the MITxPRO emeritus batch. This was a good experience as I got to interact with seasoned professionals and shared my knowledge and experience with them.
    4. A big disappointment  here was the cancellation of book deal with Packt. I believe this was due to several reasons - slow pace of writing and also an aggressive stance towards the intermediaries of the Packt team which allowed them to take this decision on flimsy grounds
    5. I was able to get good opportunities to enhance my soft skills by attending several useful trainings, I found them useful and bought books for both the subject, The trainings I attended were 
      1. Crucial Conversations 
      2. Vanquish Boring. 
      3. Diversity and Inclusions  
    6. Coaching - I was assigned a coach and got several useful insights from my interactions with the coach on Strategy, Networking and leadership.  
  5. Finances 
    1. While I did not take any financial hit during the year, my awareness of my overall finances and tax matters remains low.  This is an area which does not interest me at all. I have to hire someone professionally to do this on a regular basis.
    2. While my investments continued and my portfolio grew I do not have much clarity on my strategy and a long term perspective. 
  6. Hobbies 
    1. Travel
      1. I was fortunate to travel to several places mostly due to work engagements. The top places I visited this year were 
        1. Bentonville - The Walmart Head Office is located here and I got a chance to visit it when I was called for the Walmart SparCON  and International InfoSec conference in April.
        2. Seattle - This was for the Microsoft CISO summit . I was able to explore the Seattle downtown and also hiking one day to a waterfall
        3. Varanasi - It was  a great chance to visit the sacred Hindu temple at Varanasi and see the Aarti at the Ghats on the banks of river Ganges during the Flipkart Leadership Offsite
        4. Hassan - A temple town in Karnataka known for the temples of Hoysala architecture 
        5. Astabulla - A small town in Ohio near Erie. We stayed for a week in an AirBnB in this beautiful town and enjoyed our stay and time with Krish. 
    2. Photography 
      1. I rekindled my love for photography with a course with Toehold. I and Krish did this course together and learnt the basics. I may have revise them again if I have to stay in touch
      2. I also got a chance to buy a superzoom camera - Nikon P 1000 to start my journey in Wildlife photography. In my stay at our farmhouse in Haryana I was able to take photographs of several birds and animals. I also used the Seek app from Naturalists to identify these birds as well
    3. Writing 
      1. As much as I am eager to write I did not achieve as much as I would have liked.  However I am keeping up the effort and the new GenAI tools are helping in generating ideas and also reviewing drafts. 
      2. I bought a writing course and did not go through it :-)
    4. Cooking 
      1. I picked up Cooking as a way of eating healthy and learn to eat well at home. I have not become proficient but have made some small baby steps. I can now cook rice and dal and obviously and omelette as well
  7. Side Projects 
    1. SwitchtoCyber - I continue to work on my community project - SwitchtoCyber which aims to help Cyber security professionals transition to Cyber security. We were consistent in posting Linkedin Posts and were able to hold a few webinars and also two mentoring sessions. Our Linkedin Followership count crossed 1500 ( from 500 in 2023). There is a lot of scope to be done here and I need to contribute in writing articles/ posts and also getting volunteers and participants to the community. 


Wishing myself a satisfying and happy new year 2025.  I will pen down my goals for 2025 in another post. 

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