Quick Fire 🔥 with Babatunde Onadipe

Babatunde Onadipe is a cybersecurity professional with experience across consulting, aerospace, research, and financial services. He currently works as a Cyber Security Solutions Architect at the Bank of Canada, where he helps design secure and resilient technology solutions for critical financial infrastructure. His career has also spanned roles at McGill University as a Cloud Architect and AI Researcher, and at Bombardier Aerospace as a Cloud Infrastructure Security Engineer, blending hands-on engineering with applied research.

His current focus sits at the frontier of emerging security challenges. Beyond cloud and AI security, Babatunde is particularly interested in Post-Quantum Cryptography and what it means for the future of digital trust, data protection, and critical infrastructure. For him, the quantum era is not just a distant technical concern, but a shift organisations should begin preparing for today by building cryptographic agility, resilience, and future readiness into their security architectures.

Outside his corporate work, Babatunde is the co-founder and chief technology officer (CTO) of WakaMi, a platform where people and businesses can seamlessly and securely outsource everyday errands and tasks. As CTO, he leads the platform’s technology vision, product architecture, security strategy, and engineering direction.

• Explain your job to a 5-year-old.

I help protect computer systems from bad people on the internet. Imagine a bank that keeps people’s money and important information safe. My job is to build strong “digital locks and walls” around it so no one can break in, steal things, or cause damage. I work with a smart team to find the safest ways to build and protect these computers. So basically, I’m like a superhero who protects the bank, but instead of a cape, I use a laptop. 

• What’s one cyber risk you think most people still underestimate?

That’d be Shadow AI, and this refers to when employees use public AI tools at work without formal approval. People paste source code, customer data, financial figures, internal strategy documents, and confidential meeting notes into AI tools or chatbots to summarise, rewrite, or debug them. It feels harmless because the productivity gain is real and immediate, but the data may leave the organisation’s control and end up in third-party systems, logs, or model improvement pipelines.

What gets underestimated is the scale. This is not just a few careless employees; it is happening across teams in many organisations, often with the best intentions. Traditional data loss prevention tools weren’t designed for this pattern, and most security policies haven’t caught up. The real fix isn’t blocking AI outright, since that just pushes it further underground. Organisations need safe, approved AI tools, clear guardrails, and practical guidance on what data should never be shared externally.

• How did working in aerospace and academia shape the way you think about security today?

Working in aerospace and academia shaped my view of security in two important ways. Aerospace taught me discipline, precision, and the importance of resilience. In that environment, systems are complex, highly interconnected, and often safety-critical, so security cannot be treated as an afterthought. You have to think carefully about risk, reliability, compliance, and what could go wrong long before anything is deployed.

Academia, on the other hand, strengthened my curiosity and research mindset and helped me build a passion for problem-solving. At McGill, I learned to think from first principles, ask better questions, explore current and emerging technologies, and look beyond immediate implementation to understand where technology is heading. Research is not just about solving today’s fires; it’s about anticipating the breaking points of tomorrow. 

Combining both experiences has shaped how I approach security today: with the rigour of an engineer, the curiosity of a researcher, and the mindset that secure systems must be designed to be trusted, resilient, and adaptable from the beginning.

• What is Post-Quantum Cryptography, and why should ordinary people care about quantum computing?

Post-Quantum Cryptography is the development of new encryption methods designed to remain secure even when powerful quantum computers can break some of today’s widely used cryptographic systems. In simple terms, much of the Internet relies on encryption to protect data such as online banking, medical records, private messages, passwords, government systems, and business data. Quantum computing could eventually make some of those protections much weaker.

Ordinary people should care because cryptography is not some abstract technical issue; it is part of everyday digital life. Every time you use a banking app, log in to an account, make an online payment, or share sensitive information, encryption is working in the background. One major concern is “harvest now, decrypt later,” where attackers steal encrypted data today and keep it until future quantum computers become powerful enough to decrypt it. 

The risk may not fully arrive tomorrow, but organisations need time to prepare by building cryptographic agility, which is the ability to identify, update, and replace vulnerable encryption systems quickly. Post-quantum cryptography matters because it is about protecting trust, privacy, and critical services before the threat becomes urgent.

• What’s one habit or mindset that has helped you most in your cybersecurity career?

Staying curious. Cybersecurity changes quickly, so I try not to get too comfortable with what I already know. I ask questions, learn continuously, and stay open to new ideas. That habit has helped me adapt, solve problems better, and see risks before they become bigger issues.

• Describe a moment in your career that made you feel really good about your work.

One moment that stands out was working on cloud security improvements for a large enterprise environment and seeing how the work moved from architecture discussions into real protection for the business. It is one thing to design controls on paper, but it feels different when those controls help reduce risk, improve visibility, and give teams more confidence in how systems are built and operated.

Security can sometimes feel like a blocker when it is not communicated well, so I was proud to help translate security requirements into practical engineering decisions that teams could actually adopt. 

• When you’re not thinking about security or quantum threats, what do you enjoy doing to unwind?

I enjoy slowing things down and spending quality time with people close to me. A meaningful conversation, good music, a relaxed evening, or a great movie can do a lot to reset my mind. I also like watching football because of the emotion, unpredictability, and sense of community around the game.

I’m drawn to nature, street photography, and travelling to places with stunning natural scenery, too.