As the world of cloud security continues to progress at high speed, new challenges and threats arise and morph on a constant basis. The MITRE Corporation is a body tasked by the US government with solving some of the largest threats in cybersecurity and beyond, and we are very lucky to welcome Tracy Bannon to the podcast today, who is the Senior Principal and Software Architect & DevOps Advisor at MITRE. Tracy opens up about her career journey leading up to her current position, what drew her into the work at MITRE, and how the simplicity of the solutions-focused mission has embedded her loyalty and passion within the organization. The conversation also goes some way into exploring the potential and limitations of zero trust, and what it actually means to make progress towards safer environments. Along the way, our guest makes some interesting and quite unique arguments for why words matter, and why change is healthier through a philosophy centered on building. So to catch it all in this fascinating conversation, make sure to join us on Cloud Security Today!
Key Points From This Episode:
- Tracy unpacks a brief history of FFRDCs and their role as objective technology advisors.
- The two main areas of Tracy's work at MITRE; digital transformation of software factories, and data centricity in data environments.
- Understanding MITRE's practical application and validation of the principles of zero trust theory.
- Weighing the validity of the negative reputation that developers have when it comes to security.
- Issues with the terms DevOps, DevSecOps, and SecDevOps, and the overloading and rushing that often happens on security teams.
- Why Tracy prioritizes 'culture building' over 'culture change' when thinking about progress.
- Leading teams, modeling behaviors, and realistic expectations for human error.
- Tools and safety nets in the cloud-native approach; Tracy's perspective on how much value to assign to these.
- Why the mission at MITRE initially piqued, and subsequently retained, Tracy's interest!
Tweetables:
“It’s not a recipe. It's not five things you have to do. It's understanding the principles and then applying them, being able to audit them, and validate consistently that they're happening. MITRE does both sides of that.” — @TracyBannon [0:07:44]
“Our job is not to land and expand. It’s impact. At all costs, it's to make impact. If it's one person, or a half of that person, it's really defined by the ability to keep the US safe.” — @TracyBannon [0:09:39]
Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode:
The Software Architect Elevator
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