90% of security happens behind the scenes and it’s now a competitive advantage: Amit Bhatia, CISO, Religare Broking

Conversations around breaches, identity theft, and cloud risk had set a clear tone in 2025, where safety has already been established as the new currency of digital business. In the world of online trading, where millions of microtransactions happen every minute, the stakes are even higher. It was against this backdrop that Amit Bhatia, Chief Information Security Officer at Religare Broking, sat down with Express Computer for an exclusive conversation.

Bhatia believes the role of the CISO has undergone a dramatic shift and so much so that the very identity of the role has changed. The era of “CISO 1.0,” defined largely by firewall management, compliance checks, and governance models, has given way to what he calls the CISO 2.0 era. Today, security is not viewed as a supporting function, rather it is seen as an essential lever for business strategy, customer experience, and brand ...