SEC510: Public Cloud Security: AWS, Azure, and GCP
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Profile
Since he was introduced to an internet connection, Brandon has been a developer. He started his professional career with Smartvue Corporation, an Internet-of-Things video surveillance startup that has since been acquired by Johnson Controls. Prior to starting in security, Brandon became a Software Engineer at Asurion. After creating many web applications over the years, he eventually wanted to try something new. He was offered a spot in the Security Mavens program at Asurion, and jumped at the chance. This is where his formal journey with security began. After taking three SANS courses, Brandon knew that security was where he belonged, so quickly transferred to the internal product security team performing secure code reviews, conducting penetration tests, developing secure coding patterns, and evangelizing the importance of creating secure products. In January 2021, Brandon took the next step of his professional journey to become Senior Security Engineer - Developer Training at Zoom Video Communications.
Brandon’s love of teaching and public speaking goes back to his college days, spending 3 years on the debate team and summer breaks teaching iD Tech Camps at Vanderbilt University. These experiences taught him a lot about communication, persuasion, and empathy, three pillars he carries with him to this day. Brandon prides himself in making his classes fun, engaging, and memorable with the sharing of personal experience, war stories, polling the audience, and telling relevant jokes.
As someone who has only recently made the switch into security full-time, Brandon understands that one of the biggest barriers between development and security is the conflicting cultures. Developers want to develop. Security wants to have 100% security. These two goals are mutually exclusive! Given his experience in both areas, Brandon has been able to support both types of professionals reach across the aisle to improve DevSecOps at their organization. He believes that in order to prescribe solutions to development teams, one must walk a mile in their shoes. Brandon is happy to walk side-by-side with you as you face these challenges head on, constantly reminding you that you're not alone. Secure development is hard!
Throughout his security journey, Brandon has earned five GIAC certifications - GSEC, GSSP-JAVA, GWAPT, GPEN, and most recently, the GCSA. He holds a Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science from Binghamton University, where in his senior year, Brandon won the “Best Use of the SendGrid API” at the HackBU Hackathon. Additionally, he has won four Security Innovation Capture the Flag events, also placing second at their CTF at DEF CON 27, and in 2017 Brandon won the Asurion Hackathon for making an Alexa skill for cellphone support. Brandon taught the first ever cohort at the Vanderbilt University Web Development Coding Bootcamp in 2019, he’s a contributor to the OWASP Serverless Top 10 Project, and a co-leader for the Nashville OWASP chapter.
In his spare time, Brandon enjoys playing the drums, chess, classic video games, and golf.
Hear Brandon talk about attacking serverless servers in this SANS webcast from March 2020:
ADDITIONAL CONTRIBUTIONS BY BRANDON EVANS
WHITEPAPERS / BLOGS
Firebase: Google Cloud's Evil Twin, Oct 2020
Top 5 Considerations for Multicloud Security, April 2020
Give Hacking A Try – You Might Just Be Great, March 2019
Best Security Practices for Amazon RDS with Sequelize, Sept 2018
WEBCASTS / VIDEOS
Cloud Security Hot Take: ICS Instructor Panel, May 2021
Multi-Cloud Anomaly Detection: Finding Threats Among Us in the Big 3 Clouds, RSAC 2021, May 2021
Multiple Clouds Require Multiple Solutions: AWS, Azure, & GCP - SANS @Mic, Jan 2021Multi-Cloud ANomaly Detection: Finding Threats Among Us in the Big 3 Clouds, RSAC 2021, May 2021
More Servers, More Problems: How Serverless Changes and Reduces Risk, Dec 2020
Cloud Security Solutions Forum, Dec 2020
SEC510: Multicloud Security Assessment and Defense, June 2020
Attacking Serverless Servers: Reverse Engineering the AWS, Azure, and GCP Function Runtimes, March 2020
Secure by Default? Scoring the Big 3 Cloud Providers, Jan 2020
MusicCityCon – Security By Persuasion, June 2019
MORE
Secure Service Configuration in AWS, Azure, & GCP poster
Attack in Autumn 2020: Profile of a 0-Day, Sept 2020
Serverless Prey Project, Serverless Prey is a collection of serverless functions (FaaS) for GCP Functions, Azure Functions, and AWS Lambda. Once launched to the environment and invoked, these functions establish a TCP reverse shell for the purposes of introspecting the container runtimes of the various function runtimes.
