The ASW January 2024 Recap
January brings a new year and a new vision for appsec. Let’s leave behind lists and think less about shifting and more about expanding security.
Episode 200 (from the vault)
The first show we posted for 2024 came from the vault. Back in July 2022 Keith Hoodlet came by to help celebrate the 200th episode. Keith started the show with episode 0. Since then he’s been blogging at [securing.dev] about #appsec (of course) and DevOps. Even though this is a news segment, two of the articles were about careers and career development – and surely still relevant today.
In the first show we recorded for 2024, John Kinsella shared his take on “appsec in three words” along with a few favorite responses from last year’s guests. Then we talked about where we hope this year takes appsec and some topics that we hope to move on from. It’ll be no surprise to see more AI and supply chain items in the news. It’ll be even better if those items aren’t about more prompt injection or more shift left – some things can stay in 2023.
Eve Maler returned with recommendations for communicating technical topics to different audiences. It’s part of the theme of presentations that we covered quite a bit in 2023. This time we focused on the importance of communication skills at work.
Sandy Carielli is another guest we always love to have on the show. We talked about bad bots and their impact on products and the user experience – where there are items of value there are bots. Sandy also makes the point that value isn’t always in obvious items like concert tickets, limited edition clothing, and credentials. Bots can also drive inauthentic reviews and artificial popularity, which is as relevant to products as it is to politics.
We wrapped up January with one last discussion on delivering presentations. This time Sarah Harvey gave a conference organizer’s perspective. Sarah shared some of her own techniques for crafting slides and giving a coherent conference talk. She also explained how conferences like BSides SF actively support new speakers by offering practice sessions and constructive feedback. Giving constructive feedback is its own skill and one that’s relevant to corporate environments in addition to conferences.
Subscribe to ASW to find these episodes and more! Also check out the December 2023 recap.
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