Handle:
Security Blanki
IRL: Sarah Blankinship
Rank: Senior Security Strategist Lead
Likes: Vuln wrangling, teams of rivals, global climate change - the hotter the better
Dislikes: Slack jawed gawkers (girls are geeks too!), customers @ risk, egos
One researcher, one community, one hacker at a time we are building a community-based defense to help secure our customers, our partners and the Internet.
The Microsoft EcoStrat (Ecosystem Strategy) team, part of Microsoft’s Security Response Center (MSRC), operates at the intersection of technology and people. We strive to understand how vulnerabilities affect the Internet as a whole. This blog is our opportunity to talk about our work within some of these ecosystems, from the front lines.
As a member of the team, the thing I love most about this job is solving complex security issues with the people we get to engage with all across the world as part of the “security ecosystem,” that is, the interconnected pool of security researchers, guidance providers, and some who would consider themselves hackers. Many of whom run the world’s largest security software protection companies networks and infrastructures, and conduct research for fun and profit. These people find and report vulnerabilities, exploit vulnerabilities, fix vulnerabilities, protect customers and keep us on our toes.
A lot of what drives us is our aspirations, our hopes, if you will. Our hope that by bringing together people and policy within different organizations, we can increase trust, better defend our ecosystems and ultimately help secure our planet from malicious software threats.
Our hope is that, by being more transparent about our work in various security ecosystems and regions around the world, a message will be heard: Nobody can” secure the planet” on their own. No one product, no one company.
Knowing that, we work with a variety of communities around the world. Being a hub for many communities has its ups and downs - but the people and technology at these intersections are always interesting, Opportunities for collaboration abound – with fire drills that can polarize our internal and external security communities. Also these broad interactions expose us to all types of information and trends – improving our ability to be a harbinger of future threats, and to mitigate them by creating new intersections of technology and people.
The EcoStrat team’s next chance to interact with our security ecosystem is next week at Black Hat USA, we look forward to bringing commentaries and announcements from the Black Hatbriefings.
- Sarah Blankinship
*Postings are provided “AS IS” with no warranties, and confers no rights.*