High Five: Meet Rohit Dhamankar, Senior manager of security research for TippingPointHigh Five: Meet Rohit Dhamankar, Senior manager of security research for TippingPoint

1

FIRST HACK
Dhamankar, 32, and his classmates in India had to hack into and use their engineering professors' e-mail so they could apply to U.S. graduate schools. "We didn't have e-mail back then," he says of himself and other students at the Indian Institute of Technology in Kanpur. "So we got into our professors' e-mail accounts so we could send e-mail. Some of them had never used e-mail before, so they weren't checking it regularly."

2

TREND SPOTTING
Dhamankar admits the SANS vulnerability list he compiles doesn't change drastically from week to week. About every six months, however, he witnesses a shift in the types of attacks under way. He's watched bug trends go from pervasive worms to phishing and spyware, then to client-side vulnerabilities in applications like Microsoft Office, he says.

3

WHAT WORKS
SANS's ranking system works, Dhamankar says, though it ultimately comes down to him to make the final call. He sends out his list to a panel of experts from companies, universities, consultants, and vendors, who all put their heads together. "We seek out other users and ask if the list is useful to them," he says. "Nobody says, 'You guys suck.'"

4

CREATIVE SIDE
When he's not analyzing and ranking bugs, Dhamankar sings. He takes classical South Indian music vocal lessons and, from time to time, performs around Austin, where he's stayed since leaving India for the University of Texas. "I help promote the Indian classical music scene," he says.

5

SCARY STUFF
"We see a lot of attacks come out of China, which freaks me out. They're going for all different kinds of attacks. It's kind of scary when you don't know what they're up to."