Reflections on Software Security

Reflection on Secure Software

My name is Jim Manico. I'm a member of the software security research community. One of my greatest professional passions is understanding and investigating the creation of secure software. As a traveling software security educator, I have spent the last 4 years of my life teaching developers about software security in over 70 countries throughout the world.

Although I live in Kauai, Hawaii (one of the greatest islands in the world) I tend to only spend about 2 months there a year. The rest of year is spent traveling, teaching or going to developer conferences. My wife is often on the road with me when the location is to her liking.

Looking left from my office chair at home on Kauai.

Here are my 2014 travel records for only one airline and one hotel chain. These are quite ridiculous for someone who is supposed to live in Hawaii!  

YTD premier qualifying miles with @united in 2014 : 180,493

Total days staying at a @starwood hotel in 2014: 78. Total cities visited via @starwood in 2014: 22.

I am also fortunate to have been elected to one of the global board positions at the OWASP Foundation. OWASP is the Open Web Application Security Project, a non profit foundation dedicated to spreading application security awareness. Driving the strategic vision of a non profit foundation full of web hackers is no easy task, but is something that brings me great joy. Like SecAppDev, I fully believe in the mission of the OWASP foundation and similar organizations such as BSides.

From the left: Tom Brennan (OWASP), Jim Manico (OWASP), Jack Daniels (BSides), Eoin Keary (OWASP) and Michael Coates (OWASP) at an award ceremony where the OWASP Foundation was awarded for their charitable efforts.

I never would have thought that my favorite professional travel destination would be Leuven, Belgium in February where the week-long SecAppDev developer security training course takes place. SecAppDev is more dedicated to teaching developers to write secure code than any other conference or organization that I've been a part of. I'm proud to be one of the many educators who participate in this special week-long secure coding course. While I am a teacher, I am also a student when I attend SecAppDev. SecAppDev is where I go to enhance my skills around secure coding and prep for a new year of developer education. One of the highlights at SecAppDev for me is cryptography education because the professors who teach the crypto classes at SecAppDev are world class!

"SecAppDev courses are run by secappdev.org,

a non-profit organization that aims to broaden security

awareness in the development community and advance

secure software engineering practices." - SecAppDev.org

I always make a point to attend the sessions lead by Dr. Bart Preneel (Prof. dr. ir. Bart Preneel heads COSIC, the renowned crypto lab), Professor Frank Piessens (Prof. dr. ir. Frank Piessens pioneered application security teaching at university level), Ken Van Wyk (Ken van Wyk is co-founder of the CERT® Coordination Center and a widely acclaimed author and lecturer) and others.

One of the highlights at SecAppDev is our daily group lunch. Fine dining is almost unheard of on the conference circuit, but it's the standard at SecAppDev. 

The next SecAppDev course will be held at the Faculty Club in Leuven, Belgium this February 23rd through 27th 2015. I hope to see you there!

Aloha,

Jim Manico

jim@manico.net

@manicode