Automating AppSec with Contrast Security

**Jeff Williams** (0:00)
It's the companies that are best at software who are winning their sector. Being great at building software is directly relevant to how well you succeed in the market, and security is a big part of that. Unfortunately, companies are really not very good at writing secure code. The average application is attacked over 13,000 times a month. That's a big number. The average application also has about 35 vulnerabilities. That's a bad combination.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:25)
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**Dan Lines** (0:45)
Hey everyone, welcome to Dev Interrupted. I'm your host, Dan Lines. And today I'm joined by Jeff Williams, CTO and co-founder of Contrast Security and CPO of Contrast Security, Steve Wilson.
A quick reminder for our listeners, if you haven't already rated and reviewed the show on your podcasting app of choice, particularly Apple Podcast, please do so. Reviews are a crucial way that our show gets discovered. Jeff and Steve, thanks so much for joining me today.

**Steve Wilson** (1:17)
Hey, thanks for having us.

**Jeff Williams** (1:19)
Yeah, thanks, Dan.

**Dan Lines** (1:20)
Yeah, you know, while prepping for this episode, I came across some really interesting facts. So Steve, we'll start with you. I saw that in addition to your career as a technical leader, from being a VP of engineering at Oracle and a VP at Sun Microsystems, to VP of product management at Citrix, onto your time as CPO today, you're also a second degree Taekwondo black belt and an open water scuba diver.
I'm not sure which one is more impressive.

**Steve Wilson** (1:53)
Yeah, it's funny. I did some martial arts as a kid. I actually got into it as an adult when my own kids started when they were little.
And I had more fun with it than the kids. So I, you know, stuck with it for 10 years. And the last couple of years have been hard for any activity like martial arts. And so the guitars are getting more workout these days, but it's something that I really enjoyed doing. And actually even influences by professional life and professional thinking on a lot of fronts too. So discipline, focus, respect, those are things you can carry over into any arena.

**Dan Lines** (2:24)
That's awesome. And Jeff, you're a founder and CTO today. You were previously founder and CEO of Aspect Security.
You're also a lawyer with an emphasis on intellectual property and cyber law. How has that experience factored into your career?

**Jeff Williams** (2:43)
That was an expensive mistake.
I mean, I worked as a consultant for many years and I thought I had topped out in that field as a security guy.
And so I decided to go back to law school and both my parents are lawyers. I thought it would work. And actually, about the time I graduated from law school, it was time for the dot-com boom to really hit its stride. And so I was like, maybe I'll just start a company. And I ended up starting Aspect and growing a consulting business. And I never really got back around to being a lawyer. So I don't know, maybe that'll be next.

**Dan Lines** (3:16)
And also right before the pod started, I found out that you are on the US men's basketball team over, what was the age? Over 50 That's just interesting.
Tell us about that.

**Jeff Williams** (3:29)
Well, it's so fun. We've got a great team here from the Baltimore, DC area, a bunch of former college players, Jeff Baxter's on the team who was Len Bias' roommate in college.
And it's a super fun way to spend a few days with your friends and go to visit some cool places. And we've been winning. So it's been a lot of fun.

**Dan Lines** (3:49)
That's awesome. But a lot of our listeners are aspiring to be in the position that each of you are in, ranging from founder or executive VP at these super amazing companies. We're curious, you both have had these varied careers. How did you get your starts and kind of move up into these prominent positions? Steve, we can start with you.

**Steve Wilson** (4:11)
You know, my journey from individual contributor to manager was actually when I was at Sun Microsystems. And I was working at a little startup and then the World Wide Web was happening. And we realized we weren't doing the Internet. We said we should go get jobs, figure this out. And I somehow wound up as an early member of the Java team. And I basically started up a ladder there where I moved from writing code. And if you grep the source code to the JDK, there are still a few Java doc comments with me in the at author tag. But it's been a long time as I moved from writing code to help managing people who write code. And over time, managing people who manage people who write code. And scaled that up to a one point after Sun got acquired by Oracle, I was running a 500 person engineering team at Oracle, which is a lot of interesting experience.