Security Journey, a company that trains software engineers to code more securely, announced a new CEO — industry veteran Dan Newton.
Cybercrime cost Americans $12.5 billion in 2023, a 22% jump from 2022. As cybercrime continues to rise, many organizations have formed internal application security teams — but training existing coders to be more secure can be difficult to do in-house. Security Journey provides these organizations with numerous resources to train developers, including both a digital platform for information and hands-on lab work.
"There is a significant and growing shortage of security-focused talent in the marketplace," Newton said. "Not only do we enable the existing developers to continue to learn and evolve and more securely develop applications, but also we give [coders] the ability to add to their resumes and learn new skills."
Newton joins the company in a moment where artificial intelligence is drastically changing how software engineers work — a study from GitHub found that 92% of coders use AI tools at work. Those tools generate new code based off of preexisting data, meaning security flaws often remain in place. But Michael Burch, Security Journey's director of applications security, said that this is not as alarming as it may sound.
"It seems like a new problem because now we're adding AI into the story, but it's the same problem just now with AI," Burch said. "Whether the developer doesn't have security training and they go online and copy someone else's code as an example and then paste that code in and don't understand the security implications of what they did is the same exact problem, we're just now seeing that they have a faster way to get it using and AI resource."
Burch said that AI coding tools are ultimately here to stay, noting the productivity increases that they yield. By providing training to coders to review and supplement AI generated code effectively, he said software-based businesses can take advantage of that productivity increase safely.
"There's a lot of fear mongering, I think, in the security space around AI and that's the absolute worst way to do it," Burch said. "The right way to do this is to embrace it, understand it and know it. It's good to learn it and start understanding the security practices we have to do to make sure we're doing it right."
Newton has previously served as CEO of data center support company CDS and CEO of visualization tech company HiveIO. He replaces Joe Ferrara, who will continue to serve on the company's board.
"Dan has just the expertise Security Journey needs to continue serving customers with leading-edge secure coding education," Ferrara said in a prepared statement. "It has been my honor to steer the company through its past three years of growth and I look forward to collaborating with Dan and the rest of the leadership team as a board member."
The company is headquartered in Pittsburgh and has additional offices in Raleigh. The company was acquired by Pittsburgh-based HackEDU in 2022.
"We've got a significant presence in Pittsburgh and we continue to hire top security experts and talent out of Pittsburgh," Newton said. "There's obviously a wealth of talent in the area and there's a burgeoning tech scene there as well, so we're excited about the opportunity in the future to continue to grow and build our community in Pittsburgh."
