The Artistic Science of Building Lean-and-Mighty Security Teams
Santosh Kandala
BSides Seattle 2026 · Day 1 · Track 2
Santosh, who has built and scaled six security startups and is working on his seventh, delivers a talk on the art and science of building effective security teams -- particularly in startup and high-growth environments. The talk deliberately avoids AI topics, focusing instead on the human dynamics of security leadership: understanding business context, hiring the right alpha team, balancing builders versus multipliers, investing beyond security, managing developer experience friction, and cultivating team culture intentionally.
AI review
A leadership talk from a seasoned security startup operator with genuine war stories (bringing down Xbox Live with Tripwire, clearing 150K Azure certificates with ugly tooling). The operational wisdom is real but the talk contains no technical research, no security analysis, and no novel methodology. This is a management masterclass, not a security talk.