The Security Champions Podcast

In this episode of The Security Champions Podcast, Michael Burch sits down with Britton Janet, Quinn Merkel, and Snehanshu Samanta, students from North Carolina State University, to discuss their collaboration with Security Journey on a project to automate lab setups. The conversation explores what they learned while working through a real-world technical project and how the experience shaped thei...

Brandon Troche is an OWASP chapter leader in Las Vegas with a unique path into the AppSec community. Before stepping into cybersecurity, Brandon built his career in sales and marketing within the health and fitness industry, bringing a people-first perspective to community building, relationship development, and security education. In this episode of The Security Champions Podcast , Brandon joins...

Spandana Sarala Gorantla is a Senior Product Security Engineer at Adobe, specializing in product security, threat modeling, and secure development practices. She is passionate about making threat modeling collaborative, practical, and scalable, especially as AI and agentic systems reshape how teams build software. Spandana joined The Security Champions Podcast to discuss why threat modeling matter...

Nariman Aga-Tagiyev is an application security expert with over two decades of experience in software development across diverse technology stacks, including cloud-native environments. Since 2016, he has been in charge of the Application Security program and the Secure Software Development Lifecycle, with deep expertise in frameworks such as BSIMM, OWASP SAMM, and NIST SSDF.  In this episode, Nari...

Roger A. Grimes, CISO Advisor for KnowBe4, Inc., is the author of 16 books and more than 1,600 articles, with deep expertise in host security and defending against hacker and malware attacks. A frequent speaker at major cybersecurity conferences, Roger is known for his fast-paced, insight-driven presentations packed with practical recommendations. In this episode of The Security Champions Podcast,...

John Benninghoff is a long-time student and practitioner of managing information risk. His 25-year career in Cybersecurity and SRE spans financial services, retail, government, and health care. He founded Security Differently to advise organizations on how to integrate security into how work is done, quantify risk, improve performance, and make better decisions. John joins the podcast to explore w...

It’s been a momentous year for security champions, developer empowerment, and cultivating security culture. In this special year-in-review episode, hosts Dustin Lehr and Michael Burch look back on the standout conversations and greatest moments from The Security Champions Podcast throughout 2025. Whether you're building a champion program, supporting developers, or shaping appsec strategy, th...

Mark McMillan has been building and leading Information Security Champions programs for over five years and has spent nearly a decade shaping cybersecurity culture at Rocket. He's passionate about creating programs that empower, not punish, and help people understand their role in keeping data secure. In this episode of The Security Champions Podcast, Mark shares his journey into the field an...

In this episode of The Security Champions Podcast, hosts Dustin Lehr and Michael Burch discuss the recent success of the first annual Security Champions Summit. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Podcast sponsored by Security Journey , Secure Coding Training for Developers and Everyone in the SDLC. Learn more at securityjourney.com .  FOLLOW US to stay up-to-date with new content! LinkedIn ( lin...

Ariel Shin is a Security Engineer at Stripe, specializing in threat modeling and proactively identifying and mitigating potential security risks. She is passionate about scaling application security while reducing engineering burdens and strives to create foundations that seamlessly integrate security practices into the development lifecycle. Ariel joined The Security Champions Podcast to share he...

Eva Benn is a Principal Security Program Manager for the Microsoft Security and Response Center. She is deeply involved in the security community, having served/serving on the leadership boards of the OWASP Seattle Chapter, WiCyS Western Washington, ISACA Puget Sound Chapter, the EC Council CEH Advisory Board, and the GIAC Advisory Board. She is also a Co-Chair of the Microsoft Women in Security a...

Jacob Salassi, former Director of Product Security at Snowflake, joined this episode of The Security Champions Podcast to share insights from his experience leading security transformation at scale. This episode explores the role of empathy in driving security engagement and how security teams can better align with engineering workflows. Jacob discusses the process of building the AppSec program a...

David Kosorok, the Director of Information Security Programs at Toast, Inc., has over 25 years of experience in software and security testing - including more than 16 years dedicated to security. He’s led and scaled product security programs across organizations of all sizes, making him a trusted voice in the appsec space.  In this episode of The Security Champion’s Podcast, David joined Dustin Le...

Dustin Lehr joined Security Journey as Director of Application Security Advocacy. With nearly two decades of experience as a software engineer, application architect, and cybersecurity leader, Dustin has ample expertise in the industry. In this episode of The Security Champions Podcast, Dustin joined to explore the interconnected roles of secure code, security-conscious culture, developer behavior...

Roger A. Grimes, Data-Driven Defense Evangelist for KnowBe4, Inc., is the author of 15 books and over 1500 articles. He specializes in host security and preventing hacker and malware attacks. Roger is a frequent speaker at national computer security conferences and his presentations are fast-paced and full of useful facts and recommendations. This episode of The Security Champions Podcast explores...

Adam Bruehl, a Senior DevOps Engineer at Security Journey, has a unique blend of expertise ranging from biology to technology. In this episode, Adam dives into the intersection of cybersecurity and medical devices, pharmaceutical research, and patient data. Hear first-hand accounts of security incidents, ethical dilemmas, and the constant battle to balance cutting-edge technology with outdated pro...

Michael Erquitt is a Senior Security Engineer at Security Journey who develops educational content for all of our learners. Michael joined the podcast to discuss the AI Threat Landscape. The discussion starts with the history of the AI threat landscape before moving on to the biggest AI security changes of 2025 and the future of AI and AI security.  0:05 Welcome to The Security Champions Podcast 1...

Phillip Maddux is the founder of Deception Logic and a Staff Engineer on the Detection Engineering and Response Automation team at Compass. With close to two decades of experience in information and application security, Phillip's passion for honeypots led him to develop HoneyDB.io and his company, Deception Logic.    In this episode of The Security Champions Podcast, Phillip explained the wo...

Irfaan Santoe is the leader of the OWASP Netherlands chapter and the creator of the OWASP Security Champions Guide. He is passionate about scaling security in AppDev, DevOps, and Cloud and has helped numerous multinationals solve information security challenges.  In this episode of The Security Champions Podcast, Irfaan walks through the Security Champion Program Guide. He shares the motivation be...

Noah Morse is an application security engineer at Security Journey focused on building vulnerable sandboxes for our Break/Fix lessons that teach developers how to secure applications.  Noah joined the podcast to share his experience attending Black Hat USA 2024. They cover some of the most popular topics from the conference, the talks that Noah attended and key takeaways to consider.  Welcome to T...

Michael Bargury is a security researcher passionate about all things related to cloud, SaaS and low-code security, and he spends his time finding the ways they could all go wrong. He is the co-founder and CTO of Zenity, where he helps companies secure their low-code/no-code apps and leads the OWASP No-Code/Low-Code Top 10 project. Michael joined the podcast to explain low-code/no-code solutions an...

Ahmad is an entrepreneur with three successful ventures who is currently the CEO at Corgea. He led various products at Coupa after they acquired his previous venture, Riskopy. He built his current company due to frustration with the manual and inefficient processes companies take around security.  Ahmad joined the podcast to discuss the use of AI in product security, offering insight into its posi...

Join Micheal Burch, host of The Security Champions Podcast, as he reminisces about the standout moments from this season's conversations, from unraveling the intricacies of elegant code to exploring the human side of coding. Welcome to The Security Champions Podcast [0:15]  Clip 1 - What Can We Do For Our Security Champions? [18:30] Clip 2 - Elegant Code Leads to Better Security [26:25] Clip...

Derek is a multifaceted professional with expertise in information security, serving as an author, leader, speaker, and university instructor. His commitment to enhancing information security has defined his career, steering high-performing cybersecurity teams and crafting strategic initiatives that effectively mitigate risks and safeguard sensitive data. He excels in uniting teams, implementing r...

Tanya Janca, also known as SheHacksPurple, is the best-selling author of 'Alice and Bob Learn Application Security' and founder of We Hack Purple. Tanya has been coding and working in IT for over 25 years, has won countless awards, and has been everywhere, from public service to tech giants, writing software, leading communities, founding companies, and 'securing all things'. ...