We’re excited to announce our first Star Community Member for 2021 is @Mark_M. Mark is a Security professional with over two decades of experience in IT Security and Application Security. As a strong advocate for “Shift Left,” Mark practices what he preaches by helping companies across multiple industries build Security into the SDLC. He’s also author/co-author of 14 published books on IT and IT Security (two of which are specific to software security). 

Joining the Veracode Community in 2019, Mark has been actively participating in the forums ever since. Some of his contributions include sharing experiences in standing up a Security Champion program in his current company, providing advice about setting up policy for scans, and suggesting the metrics for measuring an AppSec program. He also participated in the Veracode Community user research in 2020 and the most recent one last month, helping the Community team improve the member experience. We’re excited to share more about Mark in this month’s Spotlight: 

About Your Experience with Veracode & Community 

Profession: What are your current role and your responsibilities in your company? 

I work at HealthEquity Inc. (A Health Savings Account - HSA - provider and consumer-directed benefits provider for before-tax saving to use on health care and commuter benefits). I’m part of the Risk and Security Team in the Security Architecture group where we work to help define and implement end-to-end secure development lifecycle principles and practices. 

Which Veracode product(s) do you use? What problems were you trying to solve and how did the product(s) help you achieve your goals? 

Mostly we use the SAST tool from Veracode and some use of Greenlight, which we’re hoping to expand to all developers. The tricky part of using the Veracode tools are not the tools themselves, but the processes needed to make them a natural part of the development cycle. Veracode eases that effort, but it’s still a significant element to build Security in, shifting left so we can get early security visibility into new and modified applications. 

When did you join the Veracode Community? What motivates you to contribute to the Community? 

I joined the community shortly after it was formed and it was shared with me by our amazing customer team when I was with Charles Schwab, led by Steffan. Because AppSec is indisputably a people problem, I believe that bringing together like-minded members who share similar needs and have similar problems is the surest way to find solutions or raise issues to Veracode for resolution. Community works best as its members engage, and engagement tends to create organic growth of the community as positive results appear and are shared across member firms. 

About You 

Have you picked up any new hobbies – or revisit a long-lost one – during the pandemic? 

Being stuck indoors, especially in 115+ degrees all summer in Phoenix, my wife and I did some home remodeling – primarily so we would have people to talk to now and then – after that, we did some more. Now we’ve run out of projects unless we win a significant amount of cash to remodel a patio cover (but not in the Summertime). We got some new puppies (Basset Hounds) from a breeder in Tucson who was into the Dog Show scene with one of our puppies, but that ended with the pandemic and now the breeder lives in New Mexico… 

Can you share with us a favorite podcast, movie, song, blog, or book? We’re all about finding something new and interesting to listen to/watch/read :) 

In 2018 we took a trip-of-a-lifetime to the Baltic Sea countries (Estonia, Russia, Finland, Sweden, Denmark, and The Netherlands), and while in St. Petersburg we took an intense 2-day tour of all the history there. We became fascinated with the stories of the Czars, and especially the stories about Rasputin. Recently, there was a terrific streaming series worth mentioning, called the Last Czars, that we binge watched to help fill in some gaps of what the tour could provide. Now we’d like to go back there, especially when it’s 115+ degrees in Phoenix. Actually, we’d be happy traveling anywhere again…