Steve Lipner — The Past, Present, and Future of SDL

How did Microsoft's Security Development Lifecycle become a repeatable engineering practice rather than a one-time security push? Steve Lipner joins Chris and Robert to trace that history from early computer security work through security response, Trustworthy Computing, and the formalization of SDL. He explains why reviewing software at the end cannot scale, how threat modeling and testing became development activities, and what organizations learned as tooling and expectations evolved. The discussion connects that history to teams starting their own programs: establish a way to receive and respond to security reports, use the protections already available in development tools, and build from there. Steve closes with guidance for mature programs that need to keep learning instead of treating yesterday's process as finished.The Application Security Podcast is brought to you by Security Journey.About Security JourneySecurity Journey provides application security education for developers and everyone in the software development lifecycle.→ Learn more about Security JourneyConnect with Steve Lipner:→ Steve's website→ SAFECodeMentioned in this episode:→ Microsoft Security Development Lifecycle→ Microsoft Security Response CenterFollow the Application Security Podcast:➜ Home➜ X➜ LinkedIn➜ YouTube➜ Instagram➜ FacebookChapters:00:00 Introduction02:36 Early computer security at MITRE04:32 A career spanning security products and practice06:28 Joining Microsoft security response08:40 Trustworthy Computing and the security push14:29 Defining and sharing SDL16:46 Why end-of-cycle audits do not scale18:32 Formalizing the lifecycle in 200421:12 Threat modeling, tools, and security testing25:12 How secure development keeps evolving28:35 Advice for starting a security program32:12 What mature programs should remember