20 Dev Leaders and Hiring Managers Reveal Their Favorite DevOps Interview Questions

Dev & DevOps Knowledge, Security Research & Strategy
13 Min Read •

We champion a security-first DevOps culture at Threat Stack, and I’ve had the opportunity of building DevOps best practices into the company since its earliest days. In our experience, this is the best way of simultaneously reducing risk and achieving peak operational efficiency.

Getting the right players on your DevOps team is crucial to this goal, of course. But how do you filter out the star players from the mediocre? Beyond a careful analysis of a candidate’s background and experience, asking the right interview questions can reveal valuable insights that make it possible to find the ideal candidate to complement your existing team’s skill sets and personalities.

To find out what questions today’s dev leaders turn to during interviews for these all-important insights, we reached out to a panel of hiring managers and dev team leaders and asked them to answer this question:

“What’s your favorite DevOps interview question (and why)?”

Read more “20 Dev Leaders and Hiring Managers Reveal Their Favorite DevOps Interview Questions”

DevOpsDays Austin Recap: Getting Back to Basics

Dev & DevOps Knowledge, Uncategorized
4 Min Read •

What’s old was new again at DevOpsDays Austin last week, with the 7th annual conference featuring fewer attendees, the elimination of sponsor tables, and a format that put the focus back on knowledge-sharing and human interaction. Running May 3–4 at the Darrell K. Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium, the conference was an interesting exercise in returning to the roots of DevOpsDays, and the payoff was quality presentations and conversations. Read on for a few of the highlights. Read more “DevOpsDays Austin Recap: Getting Back to Basics”

Profile of an Ideal Security Hire in 2018

AWS Security, Security Research & Strategy, Threat Stack Use Cases
4 Min Read •

It seems that organizations are finally understanding the importance of bridging the gap between security and operations. In a survey we conducted recently, 85% of respondents said that employing SecOps best practices is an important goal for their organizations. Nevertheless, only 35% reported that SecOps is currently an established practice.

When it comes to the ideal of marrying security and operations, many are held back by a lack of expertise. The cybersecurity skills gap has created a severe talent drought in the industry, which is expected to leave 3.5 million cybersecurity jobs open by 2021.

It’s worth looking at what the qualities of an ideal security hire are in today’s business climate, and why it’s so difficult to find these types of professionals. In this post, we’ll outline the skill sets that cybersecurity professionals need to cultivate in the age of the cloud, explain why that ideal is so hard to find, and offer practical advice for moving your SecOps program forward, regardless of who you’re able to bring on your team full-time. Read more “Profile of an Ideal Security Hire in 2018”

What Happens When You Sacrifice Security for Speed (And Common Ways Security Gets Sacrificed)

AWS Security, Security Research & Strategy
4 Min Read •

No matter where you sit in your organization, you should know what happens when you sacrifice security for speed. Threat Stack recently surveyed DevOps and security pros and found that more than half (52%) of companies make this very sacrifice, cutting back on security measures to meet a business deadline or objective. Additionally, 62% of security professionals surveyed stated that their Operations teams push back when asked to deploy secure technology — often because Ops fears it will slow things down.

This might not seem like a large problem until you consider what actually happens when you sacrifice security for speed. By putting speed above security best practices, you open your organization up to breaches and attacks. But ironically, contrary to the belief of some operations professionals, applying security best practices doesn’t necessarily require you to slow down forever.

In this post, the fourth in our SecOps survey series, we’re sharing what happens when you sacrifice security for speed, as well as some best practices your organization should apply in all circumstances.
Read more “What Happens When You Sacrifice Security for Speed (And Common Ways Security Gets Sacrificed)”

5 Tips for Managing Security for APIs

Security Research & Strategy
4 Min Read •

Creating APIs for your SaaS products provides invaluable benefits to your customers, allowing developers to plug into your resources and bring their products to market more quickly and efficiently than ever before. An API also allows you to integrate easily with other SaaS organizations, expanding your range of functionality to offer customers new features, increase your inherent value as a provider, and gain a competitive edge in the marketplace.

As with most beneficial technology, however, APIs are not without their risks. Exposing your APIs can leave you vulnerable to theft of API keys, a fairly easy way for cybercriminals to carry out denial of service attacks if you haven’t implemented the right security measures. These attacks overwhelm your server with data requests, crippling the availability of your product, and even costing you money, should the attackers demand a ransom.

At Threat Stack, we recently released Version 2 of our REST API, which serves as a way for customers to connect to our organization and extract critical information around security concerns in their environments. With Version 2, we have incorporated updates to meet industry best practices and to better protect ourselves and our customers’ data. Drawing on this experience, we have outlined below the ways in which you as a SaaS company can better manage security for your own APIs. Read more “5 Tips for Managing Security for APIs”

Three Unique Things About DevOpsDays Austin 2018

Dev & DevOps Knowledge, Uncategorized
2 Min Read •

I’ve always found DevOpsDays to be some of the best gatherings for practitioners — the people in the trenches every day. I’m a regular at these events and consistently learn a ton from my peers — it’s some of the best DevOps training you can get! And I often get the chance to talk about some of my own experiences as well. At the April DevOpsDays in Denver, I had the opportunity to share some advice on integrating security into DevOps.

The upcoming Austin summit promises to switch up the format a bit, focusing more on interactions between practitioners and less on preselected talks. Ernest Mueller has a great post about the organizers’ motivations for changing the format and what to expect, but here are the three things I’m most excited about. Read more “Three Unique Things About DevOpsDays Austin 2018”

3 Security Best Practices We Used to Build a Strong Foundation at Threat Stack

AWS Security, Security Research & Strategy
3 Min Read •

As a security company, Threat Stack prioritized the implementation of security best practices from day one. To share our experience, this post focuses on three basic best practices our engineering team implemented when we first started out. They’re quick to set up and can produce measurable improvements right out of the gate — and for that reason, we believe they’re table stakes for anyone building a technology business in the cloud. Read more “3 Security Best Practices We Used to Build a Strong Foundation at Threat Stack”

How Sigstr Built Customer Trust with Threat Stack and AWS Security

All Things Compliance, AWS Security, Security Research & Strategy, Threat Stack Use Cases
4 Min Read •

Recently, I had a great conversation with Sam Smith, the Chief Architect for Sigstr, a fast-growing SaaS platform for email signature marketing. Sigstr’s infrastructure is hosted and managed on AWS and secured by Threat Stack. Every day, Sigstr consumes and processes employee contact information from HRIS systems, customer information from marketing automation platforms, and email behavior data — which makes cloud security and data privacy key concerns for both Sigstr and its customers.

Sam’s team is a great model of how to make security a top business differentiator and sales driver. Since many of Sigstr’s customers are enterprise companies with significant risk concerns, the team has consistently been responsive to questions such as:

  • How does Sigstr access, store, and protect data?
  • How is the application’s infrastructure monitored and secured?
  • Had Sigstr undergone SOC 2 compliance or ISO 27001 compliance audits?
  • How could Sigstr help them meet GDPR requirements?

During the webinar, he shared information on how the startup managed to be so responsive to its customers’ security needs, while still maintaining a rapid pace of growth. Read more “How Sigstr Built Customer Trust with Threat Stack and AWS Security”

Highlights From RSA Conference 2018

Security Research & Strategy
5 Min Read •

Approximately 50,000 attendees descended on San Francisco’s Moscone Center April 16–20 for RSA Conference 2018. With cyberthreats on the upswing, this year’s theme of “Now Matters” was especially apt, and a wide range of keynotes, sessions, and courses covering cybersecurity today didn’t disappoint. In this post, we’ll recap some of the highlights in a day-by-day rundown of the most interesting sessions, keynotes, and events. Whether you were able to attend or not, we want to share some of the great resources and information that came out of the conference. Read more “Highlights From RSA Conference 2018”

How to Use Alerts to Become More Proactive About Security

Security Research & Strategy, Threat Stack Use Cases
3 Min Read •

We all understand the importance of being proactive about our health. Rather than waiting for symptoms of disease to land us in the ER, we eat healthy, exercise, and see our doctors annually (or at least we know we should!). So why do so many organizations fail to understand the importance of taking a proactive approach to security?

While many companies today are stuck in a mode where they’re continually reacting to alerts, true security maturity means using actionable alerts to proactively become more effective and to reduce risk over time. In this post, we’ll discuss how you can take a more proactive approach to alerting in order to strengthen your overall cloud security posture.

Read more “How to Use Alerts to Become More Proactive About Security”