Santosh Bhandari

Santosh Bhandari is a cybersecurity consultant and educator who built his career through self-directed learning and community engagement rather than formal higher education. After choosing not to pursue a bachelor's degree after high school, he entered the cybersecurity field around 2014 by participating in bug bounty programs. He achieved early success by identifying system vulnerabilities for major platforms, including receiving a notable payout from Facebook in 2015. Since then, Santosh has worked extensively as a security consultant for various organizations in Nepal, conducting vulnerability assessments and handling incident responses for several banks, payment gateways, and educational institutions.

Currently, Santosh is focused on cloud security, where he has spent several years developing a global software product that automatically scans and identifies security misconfigurations on cloud platforms such as AWS and GCP. Alongside his consulting and development work, he teaches operating systems, cryptography, and cybersecurity to bachelor's level college students. He is also highly active in the local technology community, organizing hands-on training events and workshops through Hack The Box Meetup Nepal to help aspiring cybersecurity enthusiasts develop their skills.