(upbeat music) >> Welcome to the Q3 "AWS Startup Showcase", I'm Lisa Martin. We're going to be talking about new breakthroughs in DevOps, Data Analytics and Cloud Management Tools, with WhiteSource Software, at least for the DevOps track. I'm excited to welcome Susan StClair, Director of Product at WhiteSource software to the program. Susan, it's great to see you! >> Oh, very excited to be here, Lisa, thank you. >> We've got a lot of stuff to talk about today, but ultimately, the theme that Susan's going to talk to us about us is, winning developer's trust is key to scaling-up open source security for the enterprise. We're going to unpack that. You talk about, that winning that trust is key, shifting left won't work without developers buy-in. Susan, help us understand this. >> Yeah, sure, so- on some of the topics we have later but you look at the rate of applications of being the pool of how fast that is, and you look at development teams of hundreds and you have the OpSec teams of five or ten, and they just can't do it all, so, really, you need to leverage everybody who's part of the application to really be able to make sure that you're developing and deploying and releasing a secure application. So, that's the Shifting Left. Unfortunately, I think what's happened is, because application security is overwhelmed and because they're like, "Oh, we have all of these developer teams over here, and it's their code, and they should fix it." And they just kind of dumped application security on them and the poor development teams are like, "but that's not what I do, I don't have any expertise in there." So if you really, truly, want a Shift Left to work, you do need to build that buy-in, you do need to build the trust with your extended team, for lack of a better word. And, really start to look at things that are important to them. So automated tools, making sure that they work with their tools sets and their processes. Looking at automation, not just in terms of scanning but also remediation. You just really need to start to work with them and think about application releases in a different mindset. >> And your recommendation here is also to build that trust gradually, and to let developers control the pace- >> Absolutely >> And the level of automation. Talk to me about why it's important to give the developers that control? >> Yeah, sure. Again, I think nobody likes to be told what to do, I certainly don't, don't tell me how to do my job. So, I think, that because historically application security and development have really been at odds. It has been somewhat of a confrontational relationship, so, I think as you're starting to build that trust, you do need to go slow. Where does it make sense to add in auto-remediation solution like WhiteSource, right? Where does it make sense? We don't want to do it everywhere, we don't want to overwhelm development teams with this. So, really start to look, let them control the pace, build that trust, build that. This is a good thing for everybody. And, again, I think with tools like WhiteSource, the solution software, you can pick and choose, it's not an all or nothing. We're going full automation, full remediation, one-stop-shopping, I mean you can kind of control the pace as you start to build that trust between the various teams. >> Is that differentiator for WhiteSource the ability for this auto-remediation tool to let them control that? >> Yeah, it definitely is, and I know it just rolls off the tongue, doesn't it? Just rolls off the tongue. >> It really does. (both laughing) >> Say it ten times fast >> I'm afraid to. >> Exactly, exactly. So, no, it actually, absolutely is a differentiator for us. And again when we look at, looking at our customer base and enterprise and we look at, even maybe smaller teams that trust is really made us successful and the key to that trust is really that controlling the pace with auto-remediation. And, some of the other automation pieces to the solution. >> And speaking of customers, you guys have 23% of the Fortune 100 as customers, give me an example of one of your favorite customers that you think really shows the value that WhiteSource is giving to those developers by giving them that control. >> Yeah, sure. So I feel like we're like the big company or bigger company that nobody has heard of outside of this space. But, not naming names, but large financial customers and really shifting application security, open-source application security, to the hands of the development teams. So they've actually, again, small application team, they've really pushed it out to the development teams as part of a repo-integration for scanning, for ticket creation, for auto-remediation, and that's really, let them scale beyond, just one or two teams to thousands of repos, for example. I mean, that is, in my opinion, a huge use case or huge validation of that this works. This isn't just somebody talking about how cool their software is and it's not based in reality. >> A stat that I read about WhiteSource offer that I wanted to get your feedback on, is that, "WhiteSource goes beyond traditional detection, providing dependency and trace analysis and that this helps organizations eliminate upto 85% of security alerts." That's a big number. Talk to me about how you guys do that and the advantages that delivers. >> Yeah, sure, so I think like the one of the challenges with, historically, with open-source solutions, is that they scan and they get this result, and you could have hundreds and thousands of insecure libraries and you're like, "Holy moly, where do I even start?" It's just completely overwhelming. And then you dig into little deeper and again starting to build that trust with development teams, and the development teams comes back to you and says, "Well, hey, guess what? Yeah I know that library is insecure, but I'm not using that part of that library." So, it's really kind of a false-positive. So, what this dependency tracing does and how it helps with prioritization, is it says, "Okay, we see this particular library, this vulnerable open-source library, and it is in your execution path, we can see that you're using it." So then, you're able to say, "Okay, I should definitely fix this, because we're using it, or maybe not." Maybe, again, it's part my backlog yes, we should always keep up-to-date, and be completely secure. But having that ability to prioritize where to start and having the alerts based on that really reduces the noise. And again, it builds the trust between the teams. >> So, we talked from the beginning about shifting left isn't going to work without developers buy-in, the idea of using auto-remediation tools to let developers control that pace, the OpSec folks, the Dev folks, we also have for, I believe, it's the fifth consecutive year now, a huge gap in cybersecurity skills. I think I've seen some reports estimating that there needs to be another three million professionals in the next five years to help fill that gap and at the same time we're seeing the security landscape changing dramatically. Talk to me about how the cybersecurity skills gap is affecting developers, OpSec folks, and what your seeing as a tool that can help remediate some of that. >> Sure, yeah, no, that's, I mean that is the challenge. And I would even say that there seems to those skills gap on the development side too. But, I think that in terms of some of the challenges with that, so you have to look at ways, how can we be smarter about things. So, we don't have people, large teams where they know everything about application security and open-source security that we can really rely on to drive remediation, but, also to use these tools that all of us bought that do different things, that aren't correlated but to kind of provide that glue. So, where WhiteSource, I think is trying to address this is, again, if I don't have the people, and I don't have the skillsets, first of all automation, right? So, the more that we can automate, the better. But, not just again, automating on the scanning side, I think that's certainly a part of it, but again, looking at how we can help development teams that are maybe not security experts, and keeping them up-to-date and giving them, again, automatic remediation so that they can fix things without having a really depth that you would expect in a cybersecurity professional. >> I'm sure they appreciate that, not having to have that depth, because there really isn't, in terms of developers, there isn't the time. Speed is always of the essence there. One of the things too that I know, is there's lot of tools being used, you mentioned that. How can WhiteSource Software help the developers to better utilize some of the tools that they have or not just be buying tools to check boxes? >> Yeah, sure. So, yeah it's sad fact, I think, within our industry, probably more than just our hours, but really a lot of decisions, purchasing decision are based on the, "Well, I need to scan because somebody told me to and I that I had to, and I'm going to check the box. I'm not really interested in fixing anything, I just need to check that box." And, I think, historically, when it comes to tool selection, again, because application security is really focused on that check-the-box because they need to do that for a compliance or governance reason, they really haven't taken into heart the teams that would actually be using them and having to make the magic happen. So, they would prioritize things that, again, maybe OpDev wouldn't, so, again does it work with my tools? As a developer, I live in my IDE, I live in my code-repo, I live in my ticketing system, security doesn't typically care anything about that. So, I think with WhiteSource, again, providing the tools that the OpSec team needs. So again, the compliance reports and the policies and all this stuff we love. Also providing, again, the way to easily fit into developer workflows, that's how we're helping to move beyond, okay, we're checking the box but we do want to actually fix something and we want to move the target along. So we're really, I think, helping address that need as well. >> I know you guys did a DevSec Ops Insights Report recently, unpack that a little bit with some of the key findings that have come out of that. >> Yeah, no, that's great, so it's very interesting. First of all I think we in the industry we talk a lot about DevSecOps and that security is part of the DevOps process and everything is good. But when you actually talk to people, I think, two things, one, it's very much a work in progress, absolutely, and a lot of that is part of the tooling. I think, too, like what we've found as a part of this survey, is that the developers, are often, they feel forced to, okay, I'm shifting left, you're telling me I own security, but you're also telling me that I need to get this application out the door. I need this to compete. So, they're really being forced into hard choices of which one to prioritize, and that really comes down to a culture thing. What is more important to you. Being secure or being competitive? And how do you weigh that? So, I thought that was actually very interesting, I think that we tend to give OpDev teams a bad rap but they're really doing the best they can and they need clear guidance and there needs to be a security culture for them to operate in. >> Right, that's a really big one that you just hit on, that cultural impact. It's hard to change. In the last 18 months, we've all been through so much change, personally and professionally. We've seen this massive acceleration in digital transformation, so probably more pressure on developers who need to be able to be productive from work, from anywhere environments, that that cultural change, is really critical. I'm curious if you have some feedback from customers that have done it successfully or are in the process of doing it successfully that you can share? >> Yeah, change is hard, no matter where it's at. Absolutely. So, I think, like where we've seen the most successful of our customers, around this specifically, it truly is both a top-down and bottom-up approach. From a top-down, you can't just give lip-service that application security is important. You can't just say, "Oh, again from a compliance check-the-box, point-of-view, we scan, and we're looking, and, oh look, we have these statistics. You have to really have to live it. And what I mean by that is, when you're developing new applications it's just as important as the feature list. Security bugs are just as important as any other type of bugs. So again, it goes into the workflow of the application development teams and you don't make them make these hard trade-offs all the time between security and release. And then, from the bottom-up, again, you need to be where your teams are at. You can't ask them to go into another tool, or another thing, or another this and that. They have things to do. You have to be where they are. And you, have to give targeted, actionable, not things they have to go research, a guidance, and automate as much as you can. Again, both on the scanning as well as on the remediation side. >> Meet them where they are and facilitate that automation. Susan, thank you so much for joining me today, talking about- >> My pleasure. >> How WhiteSource Software is helping that, and also for the challenge of saying auto-remediation 10 times in a row, fast. (Susan laughing) I might practice that later. But it's been great talking to you. >> That will be my home work. Likewise. >> Exactly! Thank you so much for joining me. >> My pleasure. >> This has been our coverage of the "AWS Startup Showcase", New Breakthroughs in DevOps, Data Analytics and Cloud Management tools. For Susan StClair, I'm Lisa Martin. Thanks for watching. (gentle music)