Hari Shankar Pandey on turning challenges into blueprints for safety
With over two decades of distinguished service across diverse sectors—from petrochemicals to IT, finance, and food & beverages, Hari Shankar Pandey, CPP, PCI, TAPA, Six Sigma, stands among India’s most accomplished security leaders. Currently serving as Chief Security Officer-India & South Asia, for a US Food & Beverage Co. Hari has redefined corporate security by blending strategic foresight with operational precision.
In this conversation with BW Security World, he shares his insights on building resilient security ecosystems, managing crises in complex terrains, and aligning security with core business goals.
You are leading security for one of the world’s largest FMCG companies. What core leadership values do you consistently bring to the table in such a high-pressure, multinational environment?
For me, the key leadership values I consistently bring to the table are integrity, empathy, adaptability, and clear communication. These values foster trust, encourage collaboration, and promote a positive and productive work environment.Integrity means being honest, truthful, and transparent, which builds trust and credibility with the team. It is about acting in accordance with your values, even when faced with difficult situations. Empathy is the ability to understand and relate to the perspectives and emotions of others, particularly in a diverse environment.
Empathetic leaders can connect more deeply with their teams, build stronger relationships, and create a more inclusive atmosphere. Adaptability is essential in a dynamic, global context, enabling leaders to respond effectively to changing circumstances and unexpected challenges, while tailoring their approach to different cultures and situations.
Clear communication ensures information, expectations, and feedback are conveyed effectively, aligning teams and reducing misunderstandings. In addition to these core four, values such as respect, resilience, and a focus on professional development are also crucial for success in a high-pressure, multinational environment.
Your organisation operates across a wide geographic and cultural spectrum. How do you build and align your security teams to be agile, proactive, and consistent across regions?
Building and aligning security teams for agility, proactivity, and consistency across regions requires fostering a culture of continuous improvement, adopting agile security practices, and establishing clear communication and collaboration channels. It involves empowering teams, leveraging automation, and implementing robust data governance policies.
Cultivating a security-focused culture ensures everyone shares responsibility for risk management. Agile practices allow teams to respond quickly to emerging threats, while cross-regional alignment ensures consistency without losing the flexibility to adapt to local contexts.
In a company that thrives on innovation, how do you ensure the security function evolves alongside, balancing physical and digital risk while staying business-friendly?
Balancing innovation with security means embedding security practices within the innovation process itself, fostering a culture of security awareness, and leveraging advanced technologies. This requires continuous risk assessments, robust cybersecurity frameworks, regular training, and active stakeholder collaboration, all while maintaining regulatory compliance.
Integrating security into the innovation lifecycle, promoting a security-conscious culture, and balancing physical and digital safeguards ensure the business can innovate confidently while protecting assets, data, and reputation.
If you could redesign one legacy aspect of corporate security from scratch, what would it be, and how would you approach it differently today?
Security should no longer be perimeter-based, it must be identity, device, and context-driven. Zero Trust Network Access would be transformative in this regard, aligning with the needs of a modern workforce, cloud-first environments, and today’s evolving threat landscape.
The principle is simple: never trust, always verify. Instead of granting full network access, identity is verified and access is given only to what is needed. This new approach would centre on identity-centric access, device trust enforcement, micro-segmentation, strong observability and analytics, and cloud-native, edge-delivered security.
What is your approach to scenario-based training or ‘black swan’ readiness, especially in industries like FMCG where disruption can occur overnight?
Scenario-based training and black swan readiness are essential in the FMCG sector, where speed, scale, and vulnerability to disruption are heightened. A resilient organisation must prepare for both known risks and low-probability, high-impact events such as pandemics, regulatory upheavals, geopolitical conflicts, or supply chain collapses.My approach starts with establishing a resilience-first mindset and using the “cone of uncertainty” to plan for likely scenarios such as seasonal supply delays, raw material inflation, or sudden regulatory bans, as well as black swan scenarios like a global packaging shortage or cyber-attack on logistics.
Premortem thinking — asking “What if we lost 30 per cent of revenue overnight?” — sharpens readiness. Involving cross-functional teams in brainstorming, running war-games and live simulations, and using digital twin and AI-assisted modelling all strengthen preparedness.
After-action reviews help update SOPs, training, and escalation protocols, while ethical dilemmas and potential stakeholder backlash are also factored into the planning.
As CSOs increasingly become guardians of reputation as well as risk managers, how do you align your team’s objectives with company’s broader ESG and sustainability goals?
This is indeed a forward-looking question, as the role of Chief Security Officers is expanding into corporate reputation and resilience. Aligning security with a major FMCG company’s ESG and sustainability goals begins with integrating ESG considerations into the security strategy and aligning metrics and KPIs with ESG outcomes.
Cross-functional collaboration is critical, working with sustainability, compliance, procurement, and supply chain teams to embed security into ESG initiatives.
Supporting audit readiness for ESG reporting by ensuring secure and reliable data systems is another priority. We must also anticipate emerging ESG risks, such as cyber-attacks targeting sustainability data, activist threats to operations, or misinformation campaigns.
Regular ESG risk assessments and scenario planning inform resilience strategies, while fostering a culture of purpose in the team aligns everyday work with the “Winning with Purpose” agenda.
Initiatives like building local community trust around water usage are vital for brand reputation in sensitive regions.
About the Interviewee
Hari Shankar Pandey, CPP, PCI, TAPA, Six Sigma, is the Chief Security Officer for US Food & Beverage Co., India & South Asia, with over 24 years of experience in security governance, compliance, risk mitigation, and crisis management across sectors including manufacturing, petrochemicals, finance, IT & ITES, and FMCG. He has held leadership roles at Dell Technologies, Fidelity International, and Reliance Industries, and holds certifications in the Reid Technique of Investigation & Interrogation, Six Sigma Green Belt, and executive leadership programmes from Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management and IE University, Madrid.
Disclaimer: Views expressed are in individual capacity and must not be treated as employer’s views.
