Chris Wysopal, Founder and CTO of Veracode: How Hackers Became the Celebrities of Cybersecurity

Chris Wysopal is the Founder and CTO of Veracode, a $2.5 billion software supply chain security company that pioneered the field of application security and was one of the first companies to embrace software as a service. On today’s episode, Jon Sakoda speaks with Chris on his early fame as a cybersecurity researcher and the highs and lows of building Veracode across three decades:

• How a Hacking Group Became Celebrities  [11:50 - 15:35] - Chris was a member of the famous “L0pht” hacker group who became famous for discovering vulnerabilities in Lotus and Microsoft software. Shining a light on the issue ultimately gave the group widespread media attention and internet fame, drawing much needed attention to security issues in commercial software.
• Launching a Cloud Product in the Desktop Era  [27:55 - 32:50]  - In 2006, Veracode was one of the first companies in the security industry to pioneer “software as a service” which is widely used today. Chris relives the journey of convincing customers of the benefit of leveraging the cloud during the era of client / server code repositories.
• Surviving and Thriving Through Cycles [38:51 - 40:10] - Veracode has been a wildly successful company, but has had to survive many moments of crisis that might have killed weaker startups. The company had a broken financing in the first financial crisis and has been through numerous cycles through the years.