Colonel Pradeep Bhat is a defence veteran with more than four decades of experience spanning the Indian Army, IBM India, the National Critical Information Infrastructure Protection Centre, and independent consulting.

An alumnus of Sainik School Bijapur, the National Defence Academy, and the Indian Military Academy, he was commissioned into the Corps of Signals in June 1981. During his 26 years of military service, he gained extensive operational experience in military communications and electronic warfare, and expertise in the acquisition, development and integration of complex technology systems.

He has worked in multiple software and systems-integration initiatives undertaken by the Indian Army along with DRDO laboratories and Bharat Electronics Limited. He played a significant role in enterprise-scale defence programs such as the Integrated Electronic Warfare Programme (SAMYUKTA), and Tactical Command, Control, Communications and Intelligence systems.

After his voluntary retirement, he joined IBM India, where he led multi-discipline teams to design integrated solutions for defence and government clients. His work covered multiple IT and cybersecurity domains — infrastructure, applications, information, analytics and GRC.

He subsequently worked for six years as a consultant with NCIIPC. His contributions included developing practices and processes for critical information infrastructure protection, guiding the design and engineering of the Adaptive Cyber Defence Solution, rolling out the National Cybersecurity Reference Framework and the NCIIPC–QCI Conformity Assessment Framework for Cybersecurity.

Col. Bhat holds a B.Tech in Electronics and Communication Engineering from Jawaharlal Nehru University and a M.E in Computer Science and Engineering from the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore.

Today, as an independent consultant, he advises organizations on IT and cybersecurity governance, design and development of systems, processes, and collaboration. His work is guided by a central principle — harmonization of business, technology and cybersecurity practices is the basis of resilient and sustainable institutions.