Laura Bell is the founder and lead consultant for SafeStack, a security training, development, and consultancy firm.
Laura is a software developer and penetration tester specializing in the management of information and application security risk within start-up and agile organizations. Over the past decade she has held a range of security and development roles and experienced first-hand the challenges of developing performant, scalable and secure systems. Historically the security function of an organization has been separate from the technical innovators, however Laura educates clients and audiences that in modern business this no longer works. Developers and implementers want to be empowered to understand their own security risk and address it.
Michael Brunton-Spall is the deputy director of technology and operations at Government Digital Service, part of the Cabinet Office in the UK Government. He helps set and assess security standards and advises on building secure services within government. He works as a consulting architect with a variety of government departments, helping them understand and implement Agile, DevOps, service operation and modern web architectures. Previously Michael has worked in the news industry, the gaming industry, the finance industry and the gambling industry.
Rich Smith is the Director of R&D for Duo Labs, supporting the advanced security research agenda for Duo Security. Prior to joining Duo, Rich was Director of Security at Etsy, co-founder of Icelandic red team startup, Syndis, and has held various roles on security teams at Immunity, Kyrus, Morgan Stanley, and HP Labs. Rich has worked professionally in the security space since the late 90’s covering a range of activities including building security organizations, security consulting, penetration testing, red teaming, offensive research, and developing exploits and attack tooling. He has worked in both the public and private sectors in the U.S., Europe, and Scandinavia, and currently spends most of his time bouncing between Detroit, Reykjavik and NYC.
Jim Bird is a CTO, software development manager, and project manager with more than 20 years of experience in financial services technology. He has worked with stock exchanges, central banks, clearinghouses, securities regulators, and trading firms in more than 30 countries. He is currently the CTO of a major US-based institutional alternative trading system.
Jim has been working in Agile and DevOps environments in financial services for several years. His first experience with incremental and iterative (“step-by-step”) development was back in the early 1990s, when he worked at a West Coast tech firm that developed, tested, and shipped software in monthly releases to customers around the world—he didn’t realize how unique that was at the time. Jim is active in the DevOps and AppSec communities, is a contributor to the Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP), and occasionally helps out as an analyst for the SANS Institute.
