The Secure Developer

Today’s guest is someone we have wanted to have on the show for a long time, and we are so happy to finally welcome him. Dev Akhawe is the Head of Security at Figma, the first state-of-the-art interface design tool that runs entirely in your browser. Before that, Dev worked at Dropbox, as Director of Security Engineering, leading application security, infrastructure security, and abuse prevention for the Dropbox products. He also holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science from UC Berkeley, where his thesis focused on web application security. In this episode, Dev pulls back the curtain and gives us a look at what security at Figma looks like. The relatively small organization has a culture where the security team earns their trust and works openly. This has resulted in far greater cohesion between the security team and developers. We also hear about Dev’s time at Dropbox, and how working on an application with many products exposed him to the gamut of security issues that companies can face. Along with this, we discuss some of the positive changes in how startups are thinking about security, the value of exposing people to different parts of an organization, the place of security champions, and having a curious mindset as a security professional. Dev's approach to security is empathetic, collaborative, and solution-driven, and if you would like to hear more, be sure to tune in today!

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