INTERVIEW

What does Google real time search engine have in common with Buddhism? For computer security system designer Prinya Hom-anek, there is one important feature: both put stress on the "present moment".

"Google should perhaps pay Buddha a copyright fee", chuckled Prinya Hom-anek, founder of ACIS Professional Centre, Thailand's first information security consulting firm. In fact, the 42-year-old adds, the more he learns and practices dharma, the more he perceives that the development of technology, even one at the very top of the line, still lags far behind the profound teachings of Buddha.

As the country's first IT person to be accredited as a Certified Information System Security Professional (CISSP), Prinya is behind the campaigns to raise awareness on how to prevent hacking and leaks of corporate data. He has been invited to conduct training sessions at various organisations, such as the Stock Exchange of Thailand, Egat, the Royal Thai Police, NECTEC, Software Park Thailand and Bank of Thailand.

Prinya is also the youngest member of the Asian Advisory Board of the International Information Systems Security Certification Consortium (ISC)2, a non-profit organisation, and the only Thai who was invited to join the Job Analysis (JA) study to review and update the Detailed Content Outline for the CISSP credentialling examination.

A follower of Phra Maha Vudhijaya Vajiramedhi (V Vjiramedhi), Prinya organised the Dharma IT Talk last year with the monk as keynote speaker. He also assisted Than Vor in launching dhammatoday.com website, as well as the books, Twit Dhamma Twitter and Face Dham Facebook.

Apparently, dharma and technology go pretty well together for Prinya. One of his courses, titled Strategic Soft Skills for IT Professionals, is a shrewd blend of Buddha's teachings on the Kalama Sutta and Yoniso Manasikarn, a self-contemplation, which he says has proved a worthy management technique when applied to his staff. All the employees of ACIS Professional Centre have attended dharma retreats every year.

"Our job is to prevent the customers' computers from being infected with viruses, so we should also have a similar anti-virus element built into our mentality," he said.

In Kalama Sutta, Buddha taught how people should not believe in anything without thorough understanding and this perfectly matches with scientific rules and what is presently taught in university under the label of Critical Thinking.

"IT professionals are smart people armed with knowledge and skills, but it's not enough. What we need also are right attitudes, ethics, open-mindedness. In the Strategic Soft Skill training course, I talk about how we should be diplomatic, observant, perceptive, versatile, tenacious, decisive and self-reliant," Prinya said.

For Prinya, in the bustling life today, dharma is the only way for people and organisations to survive.

"Running business together with dharma practice is not a conflict at all. When we offer the best to the customers, doing business with morality and without taking advantage of others, we usually come up with the premium products, and of course such goods are not cheap at all".

Things were not initially smooth for the self-made entrepreneur. Holding a bachelor's degree in engineering from Chulalongkorn University and a MBA from Assumption University, Prinya worked with IBM Thailand. With his penchant for thinking outside the box, he quit after a few months to set up a company with his friends. His firm, Net Engineering Telecom, has been running for almost a decade providing system integration to many organisations, but it was not easy to compete with large enterprises.

Eight years ago, he spotted a commercial billboard of the aptly named Hack Me conference. Prinya readily paid 6,000 baht as a registration fee, but was disappointed to find most of the information offered at the conference was from the internet. He then set his mind to becoming a computer security professional.

"I instantly thought, why couldn't we conduct a hacker seminar in Thailand? I did it eventually. It was the first seminar by Thais in the country, called Advanced Hacking," Prinya said.

Among the IT circle, it is widely known that CISSP is an essential certification for information security professionals, which is also required by the US's Interior and Defense Ministries. Prinya flew to Hong Kong, the regional centre of CISSP, to take an examination. After the first failure, he tried for the second time, and the rest was history.

It was his mother's illness two years ago that first inspired Prinya to embark on the spiritual path. Advised by people to whom he donated computers to take a dharma retreat, he initially thought it was an impossible task to even turn his mobile phone off for an entire week. But the dutiful son had promised to himself to take one such course if his mother was to get well again.

He did, and at the end of the retreat reemerged a whole new Prinya.

"I became totally different. Being with groups of strangers, doing the same things together with them, going to sleep at 9pm and getting up at 4am, I became more disciplined and learned a lot. The first day at the temple, I took a lot of rice which I could not finish unlike others who just took enough and left nothing on their plates.

"I asked Phra Ajarn [the monk who serves as a spiritual guide] many questions as I felt so far behind. I have learned the profundity of true dharma is marvellous. When I look inside myself, I come to realise what the monk told me: A man in passion rides a wild horse. I have since been applying dharma with my parents, wife, employees and customers and I can see it really works. I used to be a kind of an agnostic, but now I have a faith in Buddhism," he said.

"In the past, I used to get upset whenever customers or staff said something irritating. Or if I was invited to be a speaker at a certain function, I would be pissed off if people did not greet me with a wai. 'Why don't you know Prinya?', I would be thinking at the time. When I failed to pitch a project, I would not be able to sleep all night. But not anymore. Today I think it doesn't matter because I have already done my best.

"In my daily life, I used to do everything quickly, but now I've learned that it becomes a lot better to do things more slowly and consciously."

The significance of mindful appreciation of each and every moment cannot be undervalued. At the end of his presentation recently, Prinya asked the audience three questions: Who is the most important person? When is the most important time? And what is the most important work? The answers, he said, are the person who is in front of you, this very moment, and the job that you are performing, right here and now.

"If we realise this, we will always do the good things with people we meet at any time."

Maybe, the designer of Google search engine has to really pay Buddha the patent fee.