I’m joined by Mike Aiello, an awesome security executive and human. Mike was previously CTO at Secureworks, led product for Google Cloud Security from 0 → $B’s in revenue, and CISO at Goldman Sachs.
I was going to write a post describing all the details about joining, my thought process, etc. but it turns out there’s a lot to do at OpenAI and I’ve gotten very busy 😅 The post is started but not finished, will share when I can.
So here’s the short version.
Why
I was very happy at Semgrep and wasn’t looking for new opportunities, but when an OpenAI recruiter reached out, it seemed like a once in a lifetime company and opportunity that I couldn’t pass by.
During the interview process, when I spoke with my potential colleagues, I was impressed by how they were incredibly smart and kind, and genuinely, earnestly, cared about making a positive impact on the world. Several people, without me bringing it up, expressed to me that as models get better, they feel a moral responsibility to do what they can to secure the world’s software.
And now from the inside, I can see that the sentiment was genuine, and not a facade (you always wonder as an outsider). OpenAI has easily already spent millions securing open source and critical infrastructure that they haven’t yet claimed PR cred for doing.
I’ve long talked about the power of secure by design and eliminating vulnerability classes. Being at OpenAI makes that feel tractable in a way it never has before. I’m optimistic we, the security community, can meaningfully raise the world’s security bar over the next few years. Seriously.
Lastly, how I think about the decision is also well expressed by my friend Rami McCarthy, who, like with many things, annoyingly wrote a better version of what I would write in his post on joining Wiz. Similarly, I hope to “work for the security industry, at OpenAI.”
I shared a LinkedIn post with a bit more details, feel free to say hi or share thoughts there 👋
P.S. tl;dr sec will continue, don’t worry. Also, I will continue to include high quality content from Anthropic, that is also unchanged. More on that below.
