Robinhood’s David Seidman: The tradeoff between technical mastery and strong management

In this episode of The Future of Security Operations podcast, David Seidman joins Thomas to discuss their career to date and what they have learned along the way. David is currently Head of Detection and Response at Robinhood, an online brokerage firm with a mission to democratize finance for everyone. 

David has almost 20 years of experience in software and security, having worked for huge names like Microsoft, Google, Salesforce, and now Robinhood. 

Topics include: 

• David’s entry into security and their 10-year tenure at Microsoft. 
• Dealing with the public’s and media’s interest in security incidents at global organizations like Microsoft, Google, and Salesforce.
• The changes that came with David’s move from large-scale organizations to Robinhood and the difference in operations and threat actors that they have seen. 
• David’s detection strategy and how they approach the kill chain model. 
• How David manages to keep on top of their technical capabilities while also keeping the mental health and performance of their team as high as possible. 
• The lessons David has learned so far in their career about creating a culture of safety and high morale for SecOps teams. 
• Decreasing friction around prioritizing between good business and good security operations.
• How David describes the state of security operations today.  
• The challenge of false positives and ways to address the stress and burnout that come with them. 
• The need for executive stakeholder communication skills as an incident responder. 
• Where David sees security operations and incident response going in the next five years. 

Resources: LinkedIn