Can one line of code stop a $9 Trillion threat? In 2024, cybercrime inflicted $9.2 trillion in damages worldwide, a staggering cost that rivaled the GDP of entire nations. And while large corporations may recover from ransomware or DNS hijacks, small businesses, hospitals, and even public schools often aren’t so lucky. For them, a breach isn’t just a temporary outage. It’s reputational collapse, drained bank accounts, or a loss of sensitive data that can never be undone.
Sanat Talwar, a security software engineer with a Master’s in Cybersecurity from the University of Maryland, has spent his career trying to change that. With over seven years of experience in application security, penetration testing, and cloud security automation, Sanat is building tools not just to prevent attacks, but to reclaim peace of mind for the people behind the screens.
“Too many breaches happen because someone had access they didn’t need,” Sanat explains. “We wanted to fix that.”
A Growing Problem with Hidden Doors
One of the most underappreciated risks in cybersecurity today is standing access: when employees, vendors, or automated systems retain access to sensitive environments long after their tasks are done. It’s a door left cracked open for cybercriminals.
Sanat tackled this problem head-on by developing a Just-In-Time (JIT) permissions tool. Built with Python (Flask), React, and AWS Lambda, the tool grants temporary, time-bound access to critical systems, then automatically revokes it. In pilot environments, it reduces standing privileges by 70%, shrinking the potential attack surface across internal cloud infrastructure.
For IT teams, that translated to more than technical efficiency. It meant fewer audit failures, reduced incident response workloads, and a measurable increase in sleep.
“Automation isn’t about replacing people,” Sanat says. “It’s about giving them the time to focus on what matters, prevention, not patchwork.”
Securing the Internet’s Blind Spots
While firewalls and endpoint protection get the spotlight, many attacks begin in the shadows, via misconfigured DNS records or forgotten subdomains. These weaknesses often go undetected until exploited.
Sanat addressed this by building a DNS zone scanning tool that parses internal and external domains for structural flaws. It works by integrating threat intelligence sources like VirusTotal and DNSDB to provide real-time risk scores, allowing teams to act on threats before they materialize. In testing, the scanner was deployed across 20+ cloud environments and helped detect vulnerabilities that would have otherwise left the door open to subdomain takeovers.
The results were concrete: vulnerability detection times dropped by 40%. Instead of responding to breaches, organizations began identifying and closing gaps long before adversaries could exploit them.
Lives, Not Just Logs
Cybersecurity stories often focus on technical brilliance, but Sanat’s tools are already reshaping human stories.
A regional healthcare provider discovered their outdated DNS configuration exposed patient portals to hijacking. After implementing Sanat’s scanner, they sealed the vulnerabilities before exploitation. For their patients, it meant uninterrupted access to care and the safety of their data.
An IT director at a fintech firm dreaded audit season until the JIT permissions framework helped demonstrate airtight access governance, earning them compliance approval with fewer hours and zero remediation tasks.
“It’s not about fancy dashboards,” Sanat says. “It’s knowing the tools we build are protecting real people, not just company assets.”
Research That Shapes the Industry
Outside of development, Sanat’s research has helped influence how cybersecurity professionals assess and mitigate emerging risks.
His 2024 paper in the International Journal of Scientific Research in Computer Science, Engineering and Information Technology introduced an automated risk scoring model for subdomains, combining behavioral data with global threat intelligence feeds. It’s now cited by dozens of practitioners on platforms like ResearchGate.
Another 2025 study on DNS cache snooping offered new detection strategies that have proven particularly relevant in sectors like online gaming and digital marketplaces, where stolen user information can have cascading effects on business continuity and trust.
These papers aren’t academic exercises, they’re playbooks. Security engineers from startups to multinational enterprises have cited and adapted Sanat’s methods to test and fortify their own infrastructures.
Beyond the One line of Code
Sanat’s influence isn’t limited to the tools he writes. He mentors junior engineers, shares secure coding practices with cloud teams, and has led penetration test initiatives that unearthed hidden flaws in high-traffic systems. His cloud security frameworks, especially in environments using AWS, have introduced automation-first approaches to identity and access management (IAM), drastically reducing manual overhead and increasing compliance consistency by 10% across audited departments.
“Good security scales,” Sanat notes. “If it only works for one team or one setup, it’s not good enough.”
And his approach reflects a deeper trend across the industry: toward inclusive, scalable, and human-centered security systems. Gartner pegged the market for accessibility-focused cybersecurity at $1.2 billion in 2023. Sanat’s work, focused on automation that anticipates rather than reacts, is part of that shift.
The Bigger Picture
The ripple effects of Sanat’s tools are already visible. The JIT framework has contributed to enterprise adoption of zero-trust architectures, while the DNS scanner is referenced in enterprise security benchmarks for proactive domain auditing. Combined, these approaches are helping organizations across industries, from finance to healthcare to education, reduce risk and reclaim control.
An Accenture report in 2022 estimated that inclusive cybersecurity could unlock $13 trillion in global economic value. Sanat’s tools don’t just reduce downtime, they reduce exclusion. By making security easier, faster, and more intuitive, he’s making it accessible to organizations and teams that often get left behind.
What Comes Next?
With cyber threats evolving in complexity and speed, Sanat’s mission remains steady: to build systems that anticipate risk and respond before harm is done.
His tools have now protected over a million web interactions. His research continues to shape industry best practices. And his philosophy, design security like you’d design for your own family, keeps his work grounded in empathy.
“If users feel safe, that’s the real success,” he says. “Security isn’t just about stopping threats, it’s about building trust, one line of code at a time.”
