The talk consolidates ideas from my past work in a presentation geared towards a broad but still tech-savvy audience. The core ideas are simple: first, security isn’t about avoiding negative outcomes (breaches), it’s about improving security performance, and second, that most of the activities that improve security performance don’t require security expertise.
While my solo talk wasn’t recorded, the slides are available here.
Abstract
You don’t have to be Mr. Robot to be secure! While cybersecurity may seem mysterious and difficult, the most effective things you can do are like eating well and exercising: easy to understand, but sometimes hard to do. In the past 5 years, we’ve learned that much of the work needed to secure software-based systems are activities we already do, like regularly updating software and turning off services you don’t need.
I’ll review what data-driven research says about what matters most in cybersecurity, bust myths about what doesn’t matter, and when you really do need to call in the experts. Whether you write code, build infrastructure, run a startup, or just manage your home network, I’ll share practical advice on what you can do to be secure and what you should leave to others.
Slides
My slides with notes, including references, are here.
I had a great time attending - and speaking - last week at SREcon25 Americas!
2025-04-22 Update: a video of my talk is now available on my presentation page.
This was my second time at SREcon (in person), and once again I enjoyed both the talks as well as the conversations I had with other attendees. I also got to meet and reconnect with fellow members in the newly formed Resilience in Software Foundation.
My own talk, ‘Is the S in SRE for “Security”?’, went well, and I got positive feedback from people in attendance, including one person who went to my session by accident! The one thing I’d do differently next time would be to have a stronger call to action - if you are part of either a Cybersecurity or SRE team, my challenge to you is this: get to know your counterparts, learn about their work, and bring your unique skills to help them with their mission. I truly believe organizations will be better off if SRE and Security teams have a combined approach to inventory, configuration, patch management, observability, incident response, and testing.
Thanks also to the Minneapolis CNCF Community, who invited me to present a preview of my talk. Your feedback and questions helped make SREcon a success!
Abstract
There is significant overlap between Cybersecurity and SRE; understanding and leveraging that can improve the performance of both. Lessons from safety science tell us that security and SRE come through being successful more often, not failing less. Research in DevOps, Software Security, and elsewhere shows a strong link between different types of organizational performance, including development, operations, SRE, and security; in many cases, organizations most effectively reduce cybersecurity risk by improving general technology performance.
Many SRE capabilities overlap with Security, including the critical activities of patching & managing attack surface, along with observability, incident response, postmortems, testing, and platform engineering. SRE and Security teams can collaborate by supporting their mutual goals, sharing their perspectives dealing with incidents both frequent and rare, and by setting Security Level Objectives to inform decisions on when to divert resources to security as SRE teams do with Service Level Objectives.
Slides
My slides with notes, including references, are here.
Video
All USENIX conferences are Open Access! Slides and recordings are available for all past SREcon events, and a video of my talk is available on my presentation page!
Back in September, I was a guest on the IT Audit Labs Podcast!
I enjoyed my time talking with Joshua, Nick, and Eric about safety science and how we can apply lessons from safety to security. We covered a number of topics, including risk, ergonomics, culture, CrowdStrike and aviation, and I was pleasantly surprised to learn that Eric is a pilot!
You can find the episode on your favorite podcast service, or watch a video of the session on YouTube.
Description
Discover the vital intersection of safety science and cybersecurity, where human psychology meets technical innovation.
In this episode of The Audit, special guest John Benninghoff shares his expertise in safety science and how its principles can improve cybersecurity. From applying safety protocols in the tech industry to enhancing security culture through proactive human behaviors, we dive into a range of topics. Plus, we discuss how risk quantification and ergonomics can drive better security outcomes.
