FullCodePress Sponsor interview – IBM’s Michael Fidler
30 April 2009 | Mike Brown | 0 Comments
IBM are the Gold sponsor for FullCodePress and we recently talked with IBM’s Michael Fidler.
- Mike:
- Can you tell us a little about what you do at IBM and what the Rational software programme is?
- Michael:
- Yes, I’m the IBM Rational Marketing Manager for Australia and New Zealand. Rational Software is one of five IBM software brands and is the world’s largest application development vendor. We recently acquired Telelogic so we’re experiencing fairly rapid growth at the moment.
- Mike:
- Rational AppScan is a product that assesses the security of website and applications. How does it work and how important should security be for businesses and organisations?
- Michael:
- Industry analyst firm Gartner reports that 75% of cyber attacks today take place at the application level, and estimates that nearly 80% of companies will suffer an application security incident by 2010. Our own annual X-Force report backs this up by saying ‘web application vulnerabilities continue to be the achilles heel for the security industry contributing more than half of all Web vulnerabilities in 2008′.
- So for organisations that rely on exchanging sensitive data online, AppScan is an automated web application security solution that accurately pinpoints critical vulnerabilities and manages the process of fixing them. Unlike other tools that overwhelm you with unactionable data, AppScan helps you to evaluate, understand and resolve issues in order to eliminate security threats and minimise exposure to vulnerabilities. Rational AppScan is the industry leading web application vulnerability assessment tool on the market and we’ve been incredibly happy to see the amount of interest the product is generating both overseas and here in Australia and New Zealand.
- Mike:
- Is AppScan aimed at large corporations with major applications or can it be used by smaller teams and developers?
- Michael:
- The increasing number of online security breaches effects everyone, not just the large corporations. As a result there are several different versions of AppScan available depending on the user and company size. More detail on each can be found here
- For smaller teams I’d recommend the AppScan Express Edition or AppScan OnDemand which is an outsourced, SaaS solution. Either way, I’d urge anyone that’s interested to do a free trial download of AppScan.
- Mike:
- We’re delighted to have IBM as the Gold sponsor for FullCodePress. What was attractive to IBM in sponsoring FullCodePress?
- Michael:
- We love the concept of FullCodePress and are very happy to be a part of it. Quite simply we love the fact that its for charity and we thought it was a cool way to show Rational AppScan in action. We’ll also hand out a security award to the website that is most secure at the end of the 24 hour timeframe. No pressure…
- Mike:
- Building a website in 24 hours, effectively in front of a live audience, is going to be a tough ask. But often something very special comes out of circumstances like this. Do you think there’s anything about this model that could be of use to huge organisations like IBM?
- Michael:
- Definitely. I think this is agile development at its purest. Its building on the ideas and contributions of all team members, clear communication and on-the-spot decision making is paramount, planning is crucial but at the same time there has to be room to alter course at very short notice. This is in fact how we develop IBM software internally – we have about 500 Agile practitioners across IBM – so this is near and dear to us.
