013: Why Product Managers are Key to IoT security

Welcome to episode #13 of IoT Product Leadership, a podcast featuring in-depth conversations with product leaders on what it takes to build great IoT products. I’m your host, Daniel Elizalde.   I have a very special episode for you today. My guest is Mark Felegyhazi, CEO of Avatao. Mark is a cybersecurity expert, who is passionate about strategic risk management, product management and anything that involves humans interacting with technology. His company, Avatao, is an online training platform for developing IT security skills to build secure software. In this episode we discuss the importance of creating a culture of security within your company and we explore the key role Product Managers play in creating secure products. Since security continues to be one of the top challenges plaguing IoT adoption, this is an episode no Product Leader should miss. To learn more about Mark and Avatao, and access the resources mentioned in this episode, visit iotproductleadership.com.   There you’ll find the show notes for all episodes, including this one. Plus if you are looking to take your IoT skills to the next level, in that page you’ll also find links to my online IoT courses, including my popular IoT Product Manager Certificate Program. The only IoT strategy program designed specifically for Product Managers. Once again, the URL is iotproductleadership.com   About Mark Felegyhazi: Mark Felegyhazi is the CEO and co-founder of Avatao, with 15+ years of expertise in networking, security and risk management.  Initially a telecommunications engineer working with Ericsson, Mark graduated from BME in Budapest in 2001, then earned a PhD degree in IT communication systems at EPFL, Switzerland in 2007, and then spent a few years at UC Berkeley as a security researcher.  His work and interest cover risk management and economic decision-making in security. With his colleagues at UC Berkeley, they uncovered the underground economy of spammers and identified their weak point to disrupt their operations. During his PhD at EPFL, Mark studied incentive issues in self-organizing networks and showed mechanisms to motivate participants to maintain adequate operation and security in a distributed network. Back in Hungary with the CrySyS Lab team, Mark was a member of advanced targeted attacks analyses that uncovered and analyzed the Duqu malware (successor of the famous Stuxnet) featured in the mainstream media. Then the CrySyS team analyzed Flame, Gauss, Miniduke, TeamSpy and other advanced malware attacks. In 2014, Mark co-founded Avatao with other CrySyS Lab members to help software engineers, students and other IT professionals to build secure software and systems. Currently, he serves as the CEO of Avatao responsible for overall operations, strategy, business developments, sales and marketing, financing and other business issues. About Avatao: Avatao is an online training platform for developing IT security skills to build secure software. It offers a rich library of high-quality exercises designed for software engineers, security champions and experts. Topics cover the phases of SDLC including design, coding, code review and DevSecOps. It is important to stress that we teach defensive security, so we not only show hacker techniques, but guide developers to fix the bugs and show them how to properly build an application. Topics we discuss in this episode: Mark shares his background and about Avatao. How Avatao approaches IoT solutions. The evolution of Avatao and how they teach security. How to evaluate the cybersecurity maturity of your company. Making security part of your company’s culture. How managers and business leaders should think about security, and how to get started. Security in IoT solutions. Advice for Product Leaders who are new to developing IoT solutions. To learn more about Mark and Avatao: Mark on LinkedIn On Twitter @ markfelegyhazi Avatao