Resilient Cyber

You are now at the Open Source Security Foundation - but you have a ton of experience (even as a former IBMer) from Google, to JPMorgan, and financial institutions through architecture, management, and engineering. Can you talk a little bit about your leadership journey? Let's dig into OpenSSF a bit more - we're only seeing an increase in software supply chain attacks - what is driving the OpenSSF and any particular threats you're concerned with at the moment? We know the OpenSSF has focused heavily on securing OSS and the ecosystem and even launched the OSS Security Mobilization Plan. Are you able to talk a bit about that plan and what it hopes to accomplish?OpenSSF is obviously one of several organizations such as OWASP and others helping to provide valuable resources to the industry to tackle these challenges. Are you able to speak about any active collaborations with other organizations or institutions, academia etc. or how organizations can look to collaborate with the OpenSSF?You are also a Fellow at the Center for Cybersecurity at the NYU Tandon school. Both Chris and I are also Fellows (at different organizations) - can you talk a little bit about what a Fellow does and how you got involved? Where can organizations really start though? With so many vulnerabilities, libraries, dependencies, and managing software and infrastructure, it is incredibly cumbersome for organizations to get a handle to what to work on first. Where do software teams start? Coming off of Father's Day, I noticed your LinkedIn tagline leads with Dad and Husband. How have you found success in balancing those critical roles and responsibilities while still pursuing your professional endeavors and aspirations?What does cyber resiliency mean to you?

Chris - For those not familiar with Security Chaos Engineering, how would you summarize it, and what made you decide to author the new book on it?Nikki - In one of your sections of Security Chaos Engineering, you talk about what a modern security program looks like. Can you talk about what this means compared to security programs maybe 5 to 10 years ago? Chris - When approaching leadership, it can be tough to sell the concept of being disruptive, what advice do you have for security professionals looking to get buy-in from their leadership to introduce security chaos engineering?Nikki - One of the hallmarks of chaos engineering is actually building resilience into development and application environments, but people here 'chaos engineering' and don't quite know what to make of it. Can you talk about how security chaos engineering can build resiliency into infrastructure?Chris - I've cited several of your articles, such as Markets DGAF Security and others. You often take a counter-culture perspective to some of the groupthink in our industry. Why do you think we tend to rally around concepts even when the data doesn't prove them out and have your views been met with defensiveness among some who hold those views? Nikki - One of my favorite parts of chaos engineering is the hyptohesis-based approach and framework for building a security chaos engineering program. It may seem counter-intuitive to the 'chaos' in 'chaos engineering'. What do you think about the scientific method approach? Chris - Another topic I've been seeing you write and talk about is increasing the burden/cost on malicious actors to drive down their ROI. Can you touch on this topic with us?

- First off, can you each tell us a bit about your backgrounds and experience in the space?- What made you all decide to found Stacklok, what gaps and opportunities in the ecosystem did you see?- What are your thoughts around the industry's response to software supply chain security and how do you see things such as OSS and Sigstore playing a role?- While we've seen tremendous adoption of OSS and for reasons such as speed to market, the robust OSS community, innovation and more, as you both know, OSS has its concerns too, such as pedigree/provenance, known vulnerabilities, lack of maintenance and support etc. How do organizations balance these concerns while still taking advantage of OSS?- No software supply chain security discussions would be complete without touching on SBOM, which has gotten a lot of industry attention on the topics. What are each of your thoughts on SBOM?- Another topic that is around every corner lately is AI and the disruption it will cause. We're seeing organizations integrate and market AI into every possible use case when it comes to cybersecurity while there is also a lot of FUD about malicious actors using AI and even calling it a possible "extinction event". What is your take on AI and the role it is and will have on software supply chain and cyber?

Nikki - What does cyber resiliency mean to you?Nikki - Can you tell us a little bit more about the Cyberspace Solarium Commission or CSC, in particular I'm interested in the promotion of national resilience. Can you talk a little bit about what that means and what's in progress at the moment? Chris - There's been a lot of activity lately with the Cyber EO, OMB Memos, activities by NIST, publications by CISA and of course the National Cyber Strategy. How do you feel about where we're headed as a nation on the Cyber front and do you think we could be doing more, and if so, what in particular?Chris - I recently saw you made comments regarding Cloud Service Providers (CSP) and their lack of being designated as critical infrastructure I believe. I have seen similar comments from the OCND, due to how critical CSP's, especially major IaaS providers are to the nation. Why do you think they have avoided this designation as long as they have?Nikki - There are a lot of us in cybersecurity that got into it to help defend our nation and protect our country (myself included). Are there ways that other cyber defenders or technical professionals can get involved or any resources you would recommend? Nikki - I don't see a ton in legislature or in the Executive Order about the human element behind cybersecurity and our challenges with risk management. Do you foresee any legislation or anything that may come out around how to protect our users and even our security practitioners? Chris - I mentioned the NCS earlier, a big part of that was shifting market forces, the idea of software liability and also safe harbor. What are your thoughts on this topic?Chris - CISA recently released "Secure-by-Design/Default" guidance for software suppliers and manufacturers. I wrote an article recently tracing the advocacy for "secure by design" back 50 years to the Ware Report. Yet here we are, still advocating for the same concepts. What do you think it will take for this to become a requirement rather than a recommendation and how important is this paradigm shift for national security?

Nikki - You're a newly minted CISO and SES - how's it going? How have the first few months been in the role?  Nikki - With your background in both Academia as an Adjunct Professor and with your cyber and executive leadership experience - how important would you say the intersection of academia, research, and leadership go? Chris - We know you're a big proponent in servant leadership. What does being a Servant Leader in Cybersecurity and more broadly in general mean to you?Chris - We have been discussing soft skills lately with various guests. Why do you feel like soft skills are so often neglected, yet so critical to being a effective leader?Nikki - As someone who is relatively new to a CISO role - what surprised you about the role? Were there any challenges or anything that came up initially that was surprisingly good?  Nikki - What experience do you recommend for anyone who's looking to move into a cyber manager or CISO leadership role at an organization? Any books or references your recommend for anyone around leadership? Chris - As we look at the Federal Cyber landscape, there is a lot of efforts under way from the EO, OMB Memos, Zero Trust, Software Supply Chain and the list goes on. How do you calibrate your focus in your new role?Nikki -  We've seen a lot in the news around the National Cyber Strategy and other federal legislation potentially in the works. Are you seeing things like Zero Trust and Software Supply Chain security being top of mind? Or are you more worried about things like ChatGPT potentially being used by the Government?

Chris - To set the stage for the discussion of vulnerability management, Rezilion recently had a report that found that organizations had over 100,000 backlogged vulnerabilities. Why do you think things have gotten so bad?Chris - Leaders also stated that they are able to patch less than half of that backlog, thousands of vulnerabilities never get addressed. Doesn't this create a situation ripe for malicious actors to exploit?Nikki - You have a background in both data science and security research - where do you feel like the intersection of both of these areas meets? Do you feel like we need more data science experience in cybersecurity?  Nikki - Vulnerability management - my favorite topic. Why do you think people are just now starting to bring back up vuln mgmt? It seems like it's been almost 10 years since I've seen substantial research and guidance in this area. Nikki - Security research is seen in two distinct ways - in both the vulnerability identification and in academia - but both are looking at different problems and solving in different ways. Where can the two sides of the coin come together and benefit from sharing research? Chris - On the topic of vulnerability prioritization, organizations seem to be struggling. We know going simply based off of CVSS isn't wise, what are some prioritization tactics organizations can take to address vulnerabilities that pose the most risk in that massive backlog we discussed earlier?Chris - We know that less than 1-2% of CVE's are generally exploited by malicious actors, and while that number may sound small, as the number of published vulnerabilities grow, that 1-2% represents more and more exploitable vulnerabilities. What do you think is driving the growth of CVE's, from a few thousand in the 1990s to over 190,000 now?Nikki - What are the top 3 trends you're seeing in vulnerability management and identifying vulnerabilities? What should we be most concerned with? Nikki -  What does cyber resilience mean to you?

Chris - Why do you think SaaS security is so overlooked in the conversation around cloud security, despite SaaS being so pervasive?Chris - SaaS obviously involves a lot of third-party integrations. What are the risks o f these ungoverned integrations and can they have a cascading impact if one of the providers has an incident?Nikki -  Chris and I have talked a lot about software security, SBOM's, and what does open source security look like. As a leader in the cybersecurity community, what are you most concerned with when it comes to third-party risk and software supply chain?Nikki - When we talk about SaaS and application management at organizations, what do you think about how SaaS applies to building relationships and working together with other organizations?  Nikki -  When it comes to integration between SaaS products and a cloud infrastructure, what do you think about as far as risk and how to manage risk within organizations? Chris - If we're trying to handle threats, how important is it to understand integrations from the perspective of who created it, why, what data it involves etc?Chris - How do organizations start to get a handle on governing SaaS and their third-party integrations to mitigate these risks? Nikki -  I see you posting recently about exercise/fitness - this is a topic Chris and I discuss often. The balance of physical well-being and being present at work. What do you think about the balance of physical and mental pursuits?  Nikki -  What does cyber resilience mean to you?

Chris: First off, tell us a bit about NetRise, what you all do, and what your focus is on?Chris: There's been a tremendous focus as of late on software supply chain security, as you know, but much of it focuses on things such as Cloud, SaaS, Containers etc. at NetRise you all take a focus on Firmware, IoT and Cyber Physical Systems (CPS). Why is that and what are some concerns folks overlook with these vectors?Nikki: You just announced the launch of ETHOS - a cooperation between several organizations to investigate threat indicators and looking into emerging trends in attacks. Can you talk a little bit about how this idea came together and what ETHOS will be doing? Nikki:You have a lot of expertise around IoT and IIoT, can you talk about some emerging trends in cyber threats and concerns around the connectivity of devices? Chris: I know you guys focus a fair bit on SBOM. For those not required to have one due to policy or regulations, what are the benefits of doing so?Chris: I know you all have experience and expertise with vulnerabilities in products. Does SBOM help address scenarios where the product itself may have no identified vulnerabilities or CVE's but components identified in its SBOM do?Chris: I noticed you're also a USMC veteran, so first, thanks for your service. As a fellow veteran, as I recently walked the RSAC floor this past week I noticed how many leaders in the industry had former military experience. Have you noticed anything similar in Cyber and has your military experience served you in any ways as you have went on to go into industry cyber roles and now as a CEO?Nikki: You have such great experience between threat hunting, incident response, to now being a CEO / Co-founder and Advisor to multiple other companies. What has that transition been like and do you have any advice for any other practitioners out there that may be interested in starting their own organization? Nikki: What's your favorite book, podcast, or other media right now? Anything we should be checking out? Nikki: What are some of the big things going on at NetRise right now? Any other projects you and the team are working on that you would like to share?

Chris: Can you tell us a bit about your background and what the role of the Deputy Principal Cyber Advisor does?Nikki: When we talk about workforce challenges, I think about the types of skills that someone is looking for in a cyber program. What types of skills do you look for in hiring and what kinds of skills do we still need in the cyber profession? Chris: We know you've been focused heavily on the Cybersecurity workforce for DoN.  In our discussions of digital modernization, the focus is often on tech, such as cloud, zero trust, etc. Why do you think the people or workforce aspect is so often overlooked? Nikki: What do you think about the value of education and certifications when it comes to hiring and retaining cybersecurity professionals? Whether it's an analyst or an engineer, there is a lot of back and forth in the industry on whether certifications should be required or if it may be limiting the talent pool  Nikki: I saw you posted recently about North Dakota requiring cybersecurity education in schools - how critical do you think this is for K-12? As a mom this is something I think about all the time Chris: Can you tell us a bit about the DoN's approach to modernizing the workforce around cybersecurity?Chris: There's been some buzz around the DoN's Cyberspace Superiority Vision, what exactly does that entail?Nikki: I have the opportunity to teach my kids but what about all the other children without parents in cybersecurity?  Nikki: One of the other interesting articles that came out recently was around the potential change in cybersecurity leadership we'll be seeing in the next few years. Do you foresee some of these leaders leaving the industry and what kind of effect do you think it will have on the industry? Chris: We know there's rumbles of an upcoming DoN Cyber Strategy. We recently saw the release of the National Cyber Strategy. How will the DoN strategy build on that and what are the synergies between the two? Nikki: What does cyber resiliency mean to you?