Today, as I embark on a new journey with Bugcrowd, I reflect on the most common question I have heard: “why leave Okta?” It’s a good question. I am honored to have served as the Chief Security Officer at Okta, building a world-class security program for a truly innovative company. Moreover, the ride at Okta was meteoric and I know they will continue on their path to world domination. But now, it’s time for disruption. To be more specific, the opportunity to completely change the information security industry. That is where Bugcrowd is going – and that train is leaving the station with me on it.
Bugcrowd and others in the space have proven the Bug Bounty Market and perfected its delivery. I am thrilled to see the market grow – when Federal Agencies are pushing programs, you know the market is there. But it’s important to keep in mind that the opportunity extends way beyond bug bounty programs.
When I brought in Bugcrowd while at Okta, it solved three big pressing needs: validation, scale and better resource utilization. First, our bug bounty program validated my own in-house security team’s efforts. After that, we were able to leverage the breadth and scale of Bugcrowd’s crowd to free up my in-house team and allow them to focus their efforts and expertise on critical early stage product design, review, and assurance to round out Okta’s SDL. Finally, our bug bounty program ensured continuous validation on our Vulnerability Management program, driving any security remediation in a repeatable and auditable – and rapid – process with engineering.
And while all of this ensured lots of success for me as a customer, I immediately recognized how implementing a gig economy could change the face of security for everyone. The power of gig-economy disruption to an industry has been proven with ride sharing where platforms like Uber and Lyft have successfully united a crowd of available drivers to millions of on-demand customers that need a ride or something delivered.
We’ve all heard that there is a huge deficit in the available pool of talent to fill jobs in the security industry. I’ve heard several cite the number north of 200,000 unfilled security jobs in the U.S. alone. I believe the solution lies in the gig economy model. It’s a fascinating solution to a difficult problem. And the opportunity in disrupting how companies approach all of information security is outstanding. I want to be a part of that.
As Vice President of Operations, I will help foster and improve connections between customers and the crowd to not only help Bugcrowd achieve world domination, but also to fundamentally change how security is done. I am thrilled to be part of the Bugcrowd team – we will do great things!
