AppSec USA 2013 - Michael Coates on the AppSensor Project

Michael Coates has a vision: smart applications that come to their own defense. "We need to get to that point where we realize that our apps are in a military zone, they are being attacked all the time." -- Michael Coates In this segment of OWASP 24/7, I speak with Michael Coates, Chairman of the OWASP Board and the founder of the AppSensor Project. Michael's contention is that applications should be smarter, that an app should "know" when it is being attacked and have a proactive, built-in response. We discuss the AppSensor project in depth: what is it, why was it created. We start our discussion with the background and reasoning behind the project. "The real damage is when they know how your application works. They attack your business logic. They do things to violate the custom aspects of your application." -- Michael Coates About Michael Coates Michael Coates is the Chairman of the OWASP board. In addition, he is the creator of OWASP AppSensor, a project dedicated to creating attack aware applications that leverage real time detection and response capabilities. Michael is also the Director of Product Security at Shape Security, a Silicon Valley startup developing an entirely new type of web security product to protect web sites against modern attacks. Previously, Michael was the Director of Security Assurance at Mozilla where he founded and grew the Security Assurance and Web Security programs to 25 people. Throughout Michael's career he has advised major corporations and governments on secure architecture and software security. He’s also performed hundreds of technical security assessments for financial, enterprise, and cellular customers worldwide. Michael also maintains a security blog at michael-coates.blogspot.com Michael holds a Master of Science degree in Computer, Information and Network Security from DePaul University and a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.