Q: To those who are not aware of you, who are you? What do you do and what is your passion?
I’m Gautam Kumawat, self trained world’s youngest cyber crime investigator, cyber security expert from India. I fight against cyber criminals and give training to police and defence personnels. I used computer first time at cyber café when I switched to Jaipur (Pink City) to pursue higher schooling. My interest in hacking aroused when someone hacked my Facebook account. At that time I started learning about hacking for taking revenge (There should be no doubt that success is the best revenge! ), But soon Hacking and Investigation became my passion. My dad always wanted to see me as Indian Air force or Army officer but I didn’t want to be so. And now he proud of me that I am serving country by helping defence and other law enforcement agencies in domain of cyber crime investigation and its training.
1. Humble Beginnings
Q: How did you get started working with police and what or who inspired and empowered you to?
When I was 16 years old, one of my friend (10 years older than me) came to me for some work. He had committed a crime and got listed in criminal list of police website. He wanted to remove his name from that list, as he was engaged and going to marry soon. After hours playing with that website, finally I found sql injection vulnerability that can lead to change anything in database of the website. So I did, and deleted his data from the list. Two months later, police came to my house and arrested me. With assurance by my father of not doing such activity in future, they left me with the warning. Then I was restricted from using computer by my family.
Some months passed, I got arrested again but this time things were different. I wondered what’s happening with me as everyone was asking for my health and providing hospitality at the police station. After that, they started talking about a case that girl was kidnaped or missing from last three days and they were unable to find her out. They asked, “Can you please help us?” I started working on the case and cracked the case within 45 minutes, showed them live location of that girl. The police contacted the nearest police station of said location and therefore the girl was successfully ensued and saved by them. The funny part of the case was: The police were thinking that she had been kidnapped but in reality, she ran away with her boyfriend. That’s how I became a hero for police. Gradually the police started contacting me. Various academies started inviting for suggestions in solving complex cases of cyber crimes and training their personnels. Till now, I have trained and helped various State Police, Indian Army, Central Bureau Of Investigation, Defence Research and Development Organisation and other law enforcement agencies including New York City Police Department and INTERPOL.
2. Mindset
Q: What mindset distinguished you from others who were doing the same thing? How did you develop it?
Mindset of a winner, either I will earn or I will learn. I mean that I will be successful or will learn to succeed. I always keep end goal in my mind. Developing this positive attitude is a continuous process. Meditation plays an important role to be on track.
3. What is your definition of success?
To be able to surround myself with best influencer and leaders of the world. Moreover, feeling of inner joy is other part of the success.
4. Failure
Q: What do you think is the main reason why some people face failure when going after their vision?
Nobody ever wrote down a plan to be broke, fat, lazy or stupid. Those things happen when one doesn’t have a proper plan and even they have plan they do not follow it consistently.
I learned from my mentor Abhay Sharma to celebrate failures, eliminating negative behaviors and replace them with a more resilient outlook.
Life is full of failures, Thomas Edison failed 10,000 times before inventing light-blub! Many people might have demotivated or demoralized him.. But point is that he never gave up. That’s worth learning. Same thing also applies in our life. I faced lot of problems but I never think those as my failures. Those are just helping me to reach my destination and making my story more heroic.
5. What is the best piece of advice you have received or came across and would like to share with everyone?
“Work until your dreams feel jealous of your reality.”
Follow your dream, if you give up on your dream then what’s Left?
Contact link :
Website : www.gautamkumawat.com
Facebook : https://www.facebook.com/GautamKumawa7
Facebook Page : https://www.facebook.com/GautamKumawatOfficial/
Linkedin : https://www.linkedin.com/in/gautamkumawa7/