Emily Patterson

BsidesSF 2025: Your submission has been accepted: How to Build Security Products that People Actually Buy

Really flattered and excited and also nervous that my product building workshop was accepted at BSidesSF! 🎉

Saying the quiet part out loud tho, this "coalition" happened because of how many for profit vendors have used the Semgrep OSS under the hood of their products and got shut out in December. It's sort of ridiculous how many expensive cybersecurity tools are just open source tools with a dashboard.

Opengrep - The open source code security engine | Product Hunt The fully open source code analysis engine. Quickly analyze large code bases & fix security issues at scale. Initiated by 10 rival security orgs, Opengreps promises to advance and democratize static c...

Semgrep took that VC funding and ruined everyone's favorite SAST software so they got forked 🤷🏽‍♀️ unsurprising really. www.producthunt.com/posts/opengrep

I've worked my whole career with different chat apps and I am convinced that Microsoft Teams makes it extremely hard to establish a team culture. It feels like another type of email instead of a chat room.

What happens in your life to get you to a point that you are writing emails with bold, large size font, and highlights. Multiple color highlights.

Careers Join an organization that empowers users by making private communication simple.

Signal is hiring remote, US timezones for Android dec, Product and support roles. If you're a fellow privacy weirdo, this is a rare and exciting opportunity!

signal.org/workworkwork/

Gergely clearly doesn’t understand the user story that drove this decision. Let me help!

As a: Google product manager

I want to: make AI mandatory everywhere within Google products

Because: I am a complete piece of shit

Walgreens Regrets Replacing Fridge Doors With Smart Screens, Creating Techno-Dystopia Vibes Turns out putting everything behind locked glass and ad-covered screens does not create a welcoming shopping environment.

Cooler Screens is HQed here in Chicago and I know some folks who work there..... That being said, I have never understood the product and I'm not surprised Walgreens is trying to pull them out.
gizmodo.com/walgreens-re...

It’s very interesting watching people try to explain how bad it is for the Chinese government to have your information without referencing other places that have your information and the bad things those places are doing without being stopped or even gently chided.

Veracode Acquires Phylum, Inc. Technology to Transform Software Supply Chain Security | Veracode Technology Acquisition Delivers Automated Malicious Package Analysis, Detection, and Mitigation in Open-source Code

The SCA market is an over saturated mess and the rapid consolidation is getting hard to keep up with. My prediction is that the SCA vendors who don't get acquired will all be out of business in a year 🤷🏽‍♀️ there are just too many of them.
www.veracode.com/press-releas...

A frozen lake in the woods

Anyway, trying to be slightly more online, after I have been away introducing my children to the North Woods (which was fairly magical ❄️)

Exclusive: Inside the wild fall and last-minute revival of Bench, the VC-backed accounting startup that imploded over the holidays Friday, December 27, was supposed to be the start of a relaxing holiday weekend. But it was chaos for thousands of small business owners who use Bench, an

I know this from recent experience, but the Bench story is hopefully a good reminder for startup folks that execution failures do actually still matter. If your team isn't shipping solid features, you're on borrowed time.

techcrunch.com/2025/01/03/i...

Wait, so Uizard is pronounced "Wizard"? Not "You Izard"? What a branding miss.

(the tool itself is quite cool and definitely going to help a lot of PMs without design skills or teams.)

Seeing a bunch of people laid off this fall announcing new positions before the end of the year (me included yay) - very encouraging to see end of year hiring strong. Hoping 2025 improves more too 🤞

Okay I put together a Starter Pack for vulnerabilities and appsec and other cybersecurity topics - still small, help me find more great folks! go.bsky.app/7SUey2m

I'm starting in SAST/SCA, which I know deeply, but moving to API security next...

so does anybody have good/interesting vendors in the API security space that they think should be included?

CNAPP and Runtime are next up as well 😁

I'm writing a market report for the application security market, because I don't love Gartner and the like and how that ecosystem works. It will be FREE and published to Medium in parts. I've spent a lot of time in market and want to share my views. Buuuut I need some help! #cybersecurity #appsec

Emily Patterson - Product Manager Portfolio and blog of Emily Patterson, cybersecurity product builder.

In my unemployed time, I've been standing up my personal portfolio site - still a little abbreviated, but here's where I'm at right now: emilypattersonproduct.com

The butter cow sculpture from the 2024 Illinois State Fair - from https://www.sj-r.com/story/news/state-fair/2024/08/07/illinois-state-fair-butter-cow-unveiled-to-kick-off-festivities/74663202007/

Yesterday, I was fortunate enough to be able to reference butter cows (sculptures of cows made from butter) in a professional conversation, which thankfully was with someone who was married to a Midwesterner, so the reference was appreciated 🤗

AI Project and Task Management | Plan Your Work Automatically (Try for Free) The app that uses AI to help you get 25% more done. For only 62 cents a day manage your projects, todos and meetings

I was recommended Motion (www.usemotion.com) as a good way to block my time more effectively so I don't ADHD all over my calendar and get nothing done. Has anybody else used it? thoughts? is it worth it? #productsky (leaning into this hashtag, I love it)

(btw I definitely meant "this looks familiar because of the several startups I have worked at that lay off entire product teams while they are struggling" 😅)

Ah yes this looks familiar

A black cat sitting in front of a full length mirror, looking at himself

My new foster cat is a big guy who discovered mirrors today and also discovered how handsome he is 🥰

Every time I accidentally learn about a computer science debate from the 70s or 80s, I find it incredibly helpful context.

"Ah, we already argued about this 40 years ago, and they landed on ____".

There should be more "history of CS" classes out there.

Why security teams should start recruiting product managers Imagining how people with a product mindset and skillset would transform the cybersecurity industry

In the midst of the current product management sturm und drang, there's a nice newsletter reminding cybersecurity people that they should stop effing around and hire PMs 🥰https://ventureinsecurity.net/p/why-companies-should-be-recruiting?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

Thank you @bsky.app for introducing me to Vommats, which I didn't know existed until @maybo.bsky.social followed me and I thought "huh I wonder what Vommats are" and they are exactly what they sound like 😂 and now I have pre-ordered some for Sick Kid Season and feel so prepared 🙏😂

🙅🏽‍♀️🤮🙅🏽‍♀️

I am finally finally finally getting back to finishing "This is How They Tell Me the World Ends" by Nicole Perlroth (which I had to pause reading it in 2022 due to anxiety) and I remember immediately why I had to pause 😭

That sounds amazing!!! Very jealous!

A form with validation errors but no designation of which fields are required, in addition to other glaring UI problems.

AWS is estimated to be worth $3 trillion and this is what they give their users for forms, with no indication that they are worried about it. I know we're all hard on ourselves when it comes to product quality, but we're all doing the best we can with our limited budgets and timelines 🫶

My first post here and it's to say that Starter Packs are such a good feature on here. What holds back social networks? Finding people interesting/awesome/fun to interact with.

The pinned Feeds are awesome too. Really well executed, it doesn't clutter up the regular feed. 👏 @bsky.app nice job.