August 2023 Summaries

In an episode of The Future of Security Operations podcast, Thomas interviews Jeff Moss, Senior Director of Information Security at Incode Technologies, discussing his unconventional journey into cybersecurity leadership. Jeff, who transitioned from engineering to product security, shares insights into the evolution of product security over the past five years, including tackling an increased attack surface and scaling security for startups. He emphasizes the importance of prioritizing initiatives, a skill honed through his MBA and project management experience, and his strategy to blend technical and business aspects in security management. The conversation also addresses the changing organizational dynamics with CISOs now reporting to boards and CEOs, and explores the implications of proposed SEC rulemaking in the US. Jeff provides predictions for the future of security operations over the next five years, highlighting the strategic adjustments needed in the industry.

Tines University is an educational platform designed to provide a comprehensive and efficient learning experience for users wanting to master the Tines automation platform. It offers a structured journey through three learning paths: Tines Basics, Intermediate, and Advanced, which cover foundational knowledge, proficiency in story design, app building, data manipulation, and advanced techniques like metadata and tags. Unlike the more detailed Tines Bootcamp or Certification programs, Tines University aims to give a broader overview, with each learning module designed to be completed in just 30 minutes. The platform includes helpful videos and links to detailed explanations for deeper learning. Feedback is encouraged to continually enhance the educational offerings, with future plans to expand the module offerings based on user input.

The Tines team successfully developed a self-service free trial process using their own platform to allow users to experience their product cases independently. Initially planned to be managed manually, the team faced challenges such as lack of tracking and customer visibility, which prompted the shift to automation. Within a tight timeline, Martin and the team efficiently built a proof of concept using Tines, enabling trial management with features like audit tracking and integration with tools like Snowflake and Salesforce for internal tracking. This approach not only provided valuable user feedback sooner but also streamlined the product launch, freed the engineering team to focus on other developments, and improved customer success operations. The process highlighted the flexibility and problem-solving capabilities of Tines in accelerating product marketing and operations.

At Tines, the on-call process is streamlined using their own product, Tines, to enhance efficiency and reduce stress for the engineering team. On-call duties, which include incident response, bug triaging, and query handling, are mandatory for engineers post-onboarding, with optional participation for managers. The company employs tools like PagerDuty and Slack for managing on-call rotations and communication, while Tines automates tasks such as incident communication, Slack notifications, and self-hosted release deployments. By implementing automation and clearly defining roles and responsibilities, Tines alleviates the potential burdens of on-call work, promoting a more manageable and effective on-call experience.

The latest updates introduce several enhancements to the record management and case integration features. Users can now visualize data trends over time with new record reports, track changes between versions with git-style diffs, and enjoy improved interoperability with cases through expanded API options and downstream action attachments. The end-user experience has been enhanced with the ability to add multiple buttons to pages, reducing clicks, and markdown support for formatting page tables. Additionally, the story library is consistently updated with new additions, inviting users to contribute their stories, while recent features include sending Google Workspace security logs to AWS S3 and rolling back AWS EC2 instances using tags.

In an episode of The Future of Security Operations podcast, Thomas interviews Rebecca Harness, the VP and Chief Information Security Officer at Quickbase, a no-code platform for database and application development. With over 25 years in IT and 12 years in security, Rebecca discusses her career trajectory, from founding her own companies to leading cybersecurity teams through cloud-first digital transformations. She emphasizes building a strong security culture, balancing empathy and velocity as a CISO, and the importance of automation to mitigate human error. Rebecca also highlights the evolving nature of SecOps, addressing the skills gap, the role of generative AI, and the future of security operations over the next five years. Additionally, she shares insights on the impact of targeted attacks on Managed Service Providers (MSPs) and strategies to prevent team burnout while maintaining passion for their roles.