Protecting democracy is a passion for Ashish Jaiman. He is director of technology operations at Microsoft and leads the work on the company's security service designed to protect organizations in the political space from cybersecurity threats: AccountGuard. Jaiman grew up in the world's largest democracy, India, and has spent almost his entire adult life in the world's second largest democracy, the U.S. He has an unshakeable belief that it is everyone's duty to protect the freedoms that are sometimes taken for granted. 'You have to wake up and work for it every day,' says Jaiman about democracy. AccountGuard is part of the Microsoft Defending Democracy Program that works with governments, political campaigns, academics and journalists around the world to protect the democratic process from hacking, increase political advertising transparency online, explore technological solutions to preserve and protect electoral processes, and defend against disinformation.