Securing the market: Co-op brings cybersecurity to world’s largest options exchange network
Northeastern University graduate student Sai Neeharika Eddula wants to be a chief information security officer by the time she’s 40.
A cybersecurity co-op with a Chicago financial firm is giving Eddula a major boost toward that goal.
“I know I can do it,” says Eddula, who is now 25. “I think I’m on the right path.”
Eddula is a second-year master’s degree student in cybersecurity at Northeastern, and this summer she worked in Chicago as an identity and access management team intern with Cboe (formerly known as the Chicago Board Options Exchange) — the world’s largest options exchange network. She is continuing her experience with a co-op this fall at the firm’s New York City office.
“My role is enabling the right people to get the right access to the right stuff, because Cboe has billions of dollars worth of market data,” Eddula says. “Information is gold. So making sure that the systems that have that data are protected and that the right people have access to it is what my co-op entails.”
And although Eddula worked for two years as a full-time cybersecurity analyst at Dell Technologies in India, she says that working for a financial firm was “completely different” than either her prior work or her classroom experiences.
“Being part of a big financial firm taught me that no matter which role I went into, understanding the business is the most important thing — that is not something that you learn as a student,” Eddula says. “I also learned the importance of networking and building connections. It’s going to take you far.”
But Eddula has always valued the opportunity to learn.
“I look at myself as a tech person, but I wanted to position myself in a place that makes me uncomfortable, but where I can learn and I can get better,” Eddula says. “I definitely learned a lot about the financial landscape and the trading landscape in the U.S., and I learned a lot about U.S. financial markets and just how a financial firm runs.”
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And the United States is the place to learn about cybersecurity, Eddula says.
“The education for cybersecurity here and the current technologies are cutting edge,” Eddula says. “The companies that create tools — all the big cybersecurity tools — most of them are founded by U.S.-based companies. So, I wanted to be where all the action was.”
Not that the action was all tech and finance.
Eddula has danced since she was a young child and danced competitively during her undergraduate years. She even gained some recognition for the hip-hop and freestyle dance videos she posted on social media during the pandemic.
“It’s a creative outlet,” Eddula says. “I still dance with my friends, we like to go out dancing, and it’s a social thing as well — when I was in Chicago, I was with a bunch of other interns who were my age, and we were all together from all these different cities.”
Meanwhile, Eddula is plotting her path to a top cybersecurity role.
“I definitely want to work in the finance area for the next — at least — five years,” Eddula says. “There’s so much to do. There’s so many technological advancements of security systems and how they can protect financial market data — there’s still a lot more that can be done and I want to be there as that space grows.”
