At last year’s Security Serious Unsung Heroes Awards, Andrew Hardie, Chair of the BCS DevSecOps Group, was awarded the title of Cloud Security Superhero. I chased him up to see what his overview thoughts on the event were and ask why is it important to support and encourage people to take part.
What is the significance of the Unsung Heroes Awards for the cybersecurity community?
“It’s to recognize those who make those contributions that are below the surface, but still vitally important. It’s like infrastructure in IT – it’s unsung, often unnoticed, but it’s absolutely necessary. “
What did winning the award mean for you?
“I was very pleased. I felt our efforts to put security into DevOps, which has been largely ignored, did find an audience and did resonate with professionals in the DevOps world, who also realised and knew this needed addressing. “
What characteristics should Cloud Security Superhero Award have?
“They have to think of the stuff other people don’t think of. They also have to get past the hype of cloud and get to the core, business and functional needs of why you’re doing cloud and make sure this is done in a secure and reliable way. “
Why is it important to encourage people to get involved?
“Precisely that such unsung, but vital activities are recognized and rewarded. Infrastructure people are far too often ignored, it’s like this old adage about IT and public service: on tap but never on top. So, I think it’s excellent that these awards do recognize such activity that otherwise can get ignored or just forgotten, because when you are a site reliability engineer, that kind of infrastructure level, the only time your work is noticed is when something goes wrong.”
You can hear Andrew talk about the emergence of DevSecOps and why it is so crucial in the modern business here.
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