Rahul Patel, Alok Panda and Gaurav Tandon become partners at EY
EY has appointed Rahul Patel, Alok Panda and Gaurav Tandon as new partners in its UK financial services cyber and resilience practice. The trio joins from managing director positions at rival Accenture, and brings a combined six decades of experience to the partner team.
Commenting on the appointments, Preetham Peddanagari, EY’s UK financial services technology consulting leader, commented, “I am delighted to welcome Rahul, Alok and Gaurav to EY. They all have deep, strategic and highly technical expertise in cybersecurity consulting, and bring innovation and dynamism which will strengthen our already world-class cyber and resilience team. Cybersecurity is a top priority across the financial services industry, and we are responding to market demand for skills in this space by investing in talent and expanding our delivery capabilities.”
Rahul Patel brings more than 18 years of experience to the Big Four firm, and comes with an established network of client relationships in the cybersecurity sector. His specialism is in bespoke solutions, with domain expertise in security architecture, Identity and Access Management (IAM), Privileged Access Management (PAM) and cloud security. Patel was a managing director with Accenture for the last five years, having spent the best part of two decades with the firm.
Patel remarked, “In an increasingly digital world, cybersecurity is one of the most fundamental defences for financial institutions, and I am thrilled to be joining EY as it invests in client offerings in this space.”
Alok Panda meanwhile brings more than 20 years of experience to the firm. With expertise in global team leadership and large-scale system integration, his specialisms lie in large scale transformations involving cloud security, enterprise identity, data security, and consumer-facing, web-scale identity platforms. Panda was most recently a managing director with Accenture, having spent 11 years there.
Panda noted, "I am excited to be joining EY and be part of the firm’s cybersecurity growth story. Banks, insurers and asset managers are dealing with increasingly complex digital threats, and I look forward to delivering innovative solutions for our clients as they protect their assets, and operations against cyber risk."
Gaurav Tandon has over 20 years’ experience in cybersecurity and complex systems integration. Tandon is recognised for developing market‑leading digital identity solutions, and his specialisms are in leading large‑scale modernisation programmes spanning enterprise and consumer identity, AI, and data security. Having also spent the last 14 years with Accenture, he was latterly a managing director with the technology and consulting firm.
“I am delighted to be joining the EY team to help advance the products and services offered to clients to mitigate cyber risk,” concluded Tandon. “As AI and machine-learning progresses, strengthening identity and fraud defences is key and I am excited to help EY’s clients to transform at scale to secure their operations and customers."
