Difference between revisions of "WASPY Awards 2017"

Revision as of 15:04, 5 July 2017

Purpose of the Awards

Each year there are many individuals who do amazing work, dedicating countless hours to share, improve, and strengthen the OWASP mission. Some of these individuals are well known to the community while others are not. 

The purpose of these awards is to bring recognition to those who "FLY UNDER THE RADAR". These are the individuals who are passionate about OWASP, who contribute hours of their own free time to the organization to help improve the cyber-security world, yet seem to go unrecognized. 

Timeline

Call for Nominees Opens June 7, 2017

Call for Nominees Closes June 30, 2017 - CLOSED

Announcement of Nominees per Category July 3, 2017

Deadline for Nominee Profile Picture and Bio to be created and added to the Nominees section July 10, 2017

Voting for Board & Staff Members Opens July 17, 2017

Voting for Board & Staff Members Closes July 24, 2017

Winners are Notified July 25, 2017

Announcement of Winners to the Community July 25, 2017

Award Ceremony at AppSecUSA 2017 in Orlando, FL September 21-22, 2017

Categories

The WASPYs celebrate the actors in our community who grow OWASP and drive innovation to the safety and security of the world’s software. This year we are excited to offer three categories.

Best Community Supporter - The WASPY for COMMUNITY honors members who create dynamic INTERACTION and LEARNING opportunities for the OWASP Community.  Nominees to the Community WASPY Award create collaborative and inclusive environments and grow the OWASP Community.  WASPYs focus on the unsung heros of the OWASP community.  Chapter Leaders and Community Members should especially consider leaders and volunteers who bring something extra to the environment, help the chapter reach out to new attendees, or carry out the tedious and repetitive tasks that make growing an OWASP Chapter possible.

Best Mission Outreach - The WASPY for Mission Outreach honors community members who help the community GROW.  Growth can happen inside the larger OWASP community or outside it in the broader AppSec and development communities.   Leaders and Members should especially consider volunteers who pushed the boundaries of the audience and reach of OWASP to provide new exposure for OWASP’s projects and chapters.  New leaders and volunteers who help bring more people to your chapter, project, or actively represent OWASP at non-OWASP events, gatherings, and activities to build an active OWASP community are ideal candidates for the Mission Outreach WASPY award.

Best Innovator - The WASPY for Innovation is given to a community member who has contributed to the TECHNICAL advancement of OWASP in the past year.  This advancement is usually through an OWASP Project and can be in the form of code, an application, or anything that materially makes the AppSec community better in a unique way.  WASPYs focus on the unsung heros of the OWASP community who quietly go about making the world a bit better for their work.  Project Leaders and Community Members should especially consider nominating new projects, projects that have recently graduated, and project contributors for this WASPY.

Rules

Remember the purpose of these awards is to recognize the UNSUNG HEROS out there, that are barely recognized for their contributions to the OWASP Foundation. 

1. Board members may not be nominated 

2. Employees & Contractors may not be nominated 

3. All nominees will remain anonymous until July 3, 2017

4. Anyone can nominate an "unsung hero" who has contributed in some way to OWASP who they feel best fits each category 

5. You may only nominate one person per category 

Nominees

Best Community Supporter

Name: Aatral Arasu

Citation: "A great leader always there to help responds to emails quickly loves his work works very hard every day very supportive never loses focus strong willed very technical and willing to do things himself to get the job done when asked for something he will get it to you ASAP constant learner open to suggestions and ideas on how to be better respectful honest caring and I am certain HRC will make it big very soon :)"

Name: Sean Auriti

Citation: "Sean has not only worked as a volunteer in the local chapter building community, his code projects are useful to the mission and his outreach efforts have included funding requests for OWASP Foundation to grow its mission. Sean is a great example of a community member."

'"'Name: Nicole Becher

Citation: "Nicole has been an amazing chapter leader. She brings knowledge and experience teaching cybersecurity to the Mentor Initiative, WIA Committee, and projects."

Name: Ken Belva

Citation: "Ken is a long time chapter leader of the NYC chapter and a former chapter leader of the Brooklyn Chapter. Ken is always willing to step in and volunteer to help with OWASP initiatives and is a frequent participant in OWASP events as both a volunteer and speaker. Ken has spoken at AppSec USA on XSS techniques (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G539NwvpL3I) and is the project lead for the Basic Expression and Lexicon Variation Algorithms project (https://www.owasp.org/index.php/OWASP_Basic_Expression_%26_Lexicon_Variation_Algorithms_(BELVA)_Project)."

Name: Tony Clarke

Citation: "Tony has selflessly brought the OWASP dublin chapter to great nights. He has nurtured the chapter to be inclusive and open whilst growing the average attendee count to hundreds. He has spread the word across both security industry and developer industry and has also managed to get various organisations to work together such as ISACA, IISF, ISSA and ISC2. He is a great leader and despite detractors has built the chapter and awareness of software security issues in a strong vendor neutral manner to a great place. Tony is a great example of OWASP and industry leadership."

Name: Dinis Cruz

Citation: "Diniz is a fantastic innovator and motivator. As the mastermind and organizer behind the OWASP Summit he has managed to re-energize the OWASP community - many interesting projects would not have happened (or at least, not been that successful) without his passionate work. Besides organizing the event, he also consistently supported project leaders with his experience and ideas."

2nd Citation: Dinis put ridiculous effort (https://github.com/OWASP/owasp-summit-2017/commits?author=DinisCruz) into the OWASP Summit 2017 and didn't tire promoting this event!

Name: Christian Folini

Citation: "Christian Folini is very active in the Core Rule Set project community. He responds to a ton of questions submitted by newcomers when they are stuck and he answers expert level questions with stunning detail. He joined Chaim and Walter when they revived the project in 2016 and I heard he had the idea for the famous CRS3 release poster https://modsecurity.org/crs/poster that was shared all over the net. I think it's people like him that give OWASP a human face."

Name: Joaquin Fuentes

Citation: "In 2015, Joaquin took it upon himself to revive the OWASP Phoenix Chapter. He created a meet-up group to gain broader visibility. Since 2015, the meeting attendance has grown from an average of 15 attendees to over 60! Joaquin dedicates a lot of time and effort into scheduling an impressive variety of presentation topics including safe hacking, vulnerability scanner deep dives, hands on web exploitation CTF, video game hacking and more. I learn something new and cool at every event.

More importantly, Joaquin works hard to foster a friendly, inclusive environment. During our hands-on web exploitation session, Joaquin recruited co-works to assist participants with the Security Shephard challenges so no one felt overwhelmed or impossibly stuck. He always takes the time meet and welcome new members. For example, my 17-year-old son attends meetings with me. He looks up to Joaquin as a mentor for a future information security career because Joaquin encourages his learning and offers career guidance.

I highly recommend Joaquin for a WASPY award!! He is a kind, soft spoken person with a passion for sharing information security and helping others!"

2nd Citation: "He resurrected the Phoenix chapter and has kept it going with great content."

3rd Citation: "For all he has done to build up the Phoenix OWASP community. Prior to Joaquin taking point the community in Phoenix was dead. Meetings weren't happening on a regular basis. The prior leaders had done a great job but I think they had burnt out. Joaquin started the community back up and got corporate support from his employer to facilitate not only regular meetings but great meetings with great content. He also implemented MeetUp. I'm not a consistent attendee because of my work/life schedule but I always know when the meetings are happening and what the subject matter will be because of Joaquin utilizing MeetUp."

4th Citation: "Put simply, due to the efforts of Joaquin Fuentes, the Phoenix chapter has risen from the ashes (some pun intended). Before Joaquin took over the chapter there were consistently between 5-10 persons in attendance, Joaquin himself being one of them, and the chapter only met about every 3 months or so. Since Joaquin took over the chapter, we have had fantastic presenters each month, paid for dinners, along with a collaborative, comfortable, and engaging environment to meet in. Even more impressive the attendance has grown to 60+ consistently. Joaquin isn't even done yet! He is more great ideas and plans for the chapter that will undoubtedly contribute to the continued growth and over all quality of this once fallen chapter. When he speaks of where this chapter has come from and his plans for the future, it is undeniable to all that he does so with the passion that a leader must possess to accomplish that which Joaquin has."

5th Citation: "I am sure someone else will write in with Joaquin's email, but I felt the need to second his name on the list. The events he puts together are top notch, have excellent speakers, always have things to eat, and are generally excellent. I almost never miss them. He is actually so gracious about the entire chapter that I am sure he does not get the credit he deserves... the whole show is put on by just him, I think. Yay Joaquin!"

6th Citation: "A few years ago, the Phoenix (AZ) OWASP group was basically defunct. As the leader of the Phoenix OWASP group, not only has Joaquin helped to resurrect the group, but we've had great presentations on reverse engineering, secure coding, a hands-on CTF contest with Security Shepherd, etc. Joaquin is a very visible member of the security community being an employee at Early Warning, which not only hosts the OWASP meetings, but also is a sponsor and makes a strong showing at CactusCon every year, the biggest security conference in Arizona.

Our local OWASP group is not strong, going from being non-existent a few years ago to now getting a regular attendance of 40-80 people. I've gotten to know Joaquin through OWASP meetings and other security events in the area I have crossed paths with him, and he is a fine representative and evangelist for the OWASP organization."

7th Citation: "Joaquin is the Phoenix OWASP Chapter leader and regularly plans amazing talks with great speakers for the Phoenix Community. Frequently, the Phoenix OWASP talks will have over 50 attendees which Joaquin manages without a problem! Joaquin also pushes for candidates he is interviewing to be familiar with OWASP before their interview."

8th Citation: "Joaquin is the leader for the Phoenix OWASP, and it is clear that through his leadership the Phoenix OWASP thrives. Joaquin organizes all the meetings, and is constantly working with folks to create an excellent sense of community in the Phoenix area."

9th Citation: "Joaquin has taken the Phoenix OWASP chapter that had not been managed for years and brought it back to life. We consistently see 50+ members coming to our Meetups to talk about AppSec related topics. Joaquin is well connected to the InfoSec groups and has had great success in pulling in new speakers, we have already had a few speakers who are prepping their BlackHat and DefCon talks by giving their presentations to our local chapter. Finally Joaquin does a great job by reaching out to the local colleges and supporting CTF activities to garner interest in pen-testing and the OWASP community. He is a true community supporter and fully deserves a WASPY for his efforts..."

10th Citation: "Joaquin has been leading the OWASP Phoenix chapter and due to his initiative, has placed Phoenix on the map as a hub for application security. I would like to nominate him because he is always bringing in new and interesting speakers that provide great content. The most recent OWASP chapter meeting had over 60 attendees!"

11th Citation: "As a leader of Phoenix OWASP chapter, Joaquin strives to organize talks and trainings to make people in the valley learn InfoSec and AppSec from experienced individuals. He has always gone a step ahead to conduct OWASP meetings that are informative and hands on. Right from giving Arizona State University (ASU) students an overview of basic InfoSec and career opportunities to organizing a hands on hacking workshop for people in the community, Joaquin has always demonstrated passion and determination to take Phoenix to a better place in the field of Cyber Security."

12th Citation: "I've attended and participated in three OWASP meetings lead by Joaquin. They are always well organized, offer a great learning experience and considerably contribute to the community. His continuous interest and dedication to the Phoenix chapter do not go unnoticed and are appreciated by all who attend."

13th Citation: "Joaquin restarted the OWASP chapter in Phoenix/Scottsdale. Chapter meetings have grown significantly to where there were about 65 attendees at the most recent meeting with hundreds more on the mailing list (I was at the meeting, but I've only heard about the mailing list). As someone who works with him, I know how dedicated he is to the work of IT security and he's been able to attract top-notch speakers for OWASP meetings.'

14th Citation: "Joaquin had successfully revived the Phoenix OWASP Chapter. Since, the chapter has excelled from zero to filled audience bringing security talent from all around to speak and educate to security professionals on the many facets of security domains.

Additionally, this has provided a great forum to network with the many security professionals around the community and share their knowledge and strengthen the security community.

Joaquin has provided his unselfish time as an OWASP Chapter leader, and has breathed new life into the Chapter."

15th Citation: "Joaquin does a bang up job of running the Phoenix OWASP chapter. He does a great job of raising awareness and bringing folks from the infosec community into the fold."

16th Citation: "Joaquin Fuentes has had a big impact in raising attendance at the Phoenix meetings to more than 100 people monthly. The quality has gotten significantly better under his leadership. He has organized many speakers, including recruiting speakers from out of the area that have significantly developed the knowledge base of the community. Joaquin is a pen testing manager at Early Warning and he shares his professional knowledge to help us all become better in the practice of information security."

17th Citation: None

Name: Brendan Gormley

Citation: "Throughout the Brendan has not only assisted in making the dublin chapter events happen but taken a lead role. Brendan has organised venues and speakers for these events often going above and beyond to ensure success. Brendan has also been involved in some of the outreach programs the Dublin chapter had been involved in. No task is too big or too small for Brendan and without him I don't believe the Dublin chapter would be what it is."

Name: Tanya Janca

Citation: "Tanya Janca has been performing “outreach” and “recruitment of women” as her main chapter leader responsibilities for the Ottawa chapter since 2015. The chapter has not only grown by over 500% in that time, but female membership has grown from 2 female members to over 70 (the chapter has grown for many reasons, some of which are her promotional efforts). Activities include starting a mentoring program that matches senior AppSec members of the community with juniors or people who are hoping to get into Application Security; attending all sorts of technology meetups (but especially female-centric ones) to talk about OWASP and personally invite them to attend; bringing OWASP products, concepts and resources to the Canadian Government (and is currently attempting to sway policy to be more application security focused as we speak); as well as performing over 40 public speaking engagements that describe OWASP as “Your new BFF” as part of the application security lesson she has taught. She has also begun speaking at conferences semi-regularly, singing OWASP’s praises as part of every presentation. She also forms female groups to attend events together, to make them more accessible, such as her all-female team for the Ottawa iHack CTP and “Learn by Breaking things” event in June 2017 and her all female CTF team for OWASP Ottawa’s first CTF in 2015. Her claim of being an “application security evangelist” certainly seems fitting."

Name: Jeremy Long

Citation: "Jeremy is a dedicated security engineer who contributes to the community as a developer, mentor, contributor and leader. He's one of the smartest people I know - and one of the few who has patience with "the rest of us". He is generous with his time and knowledge, helping not only to contribute apps and resources, but to build up the community itself."

Name: Akash Mahajan

Citation: "Akash has been backbone of OWASP bangalore chapter he has done lot of work for evangelizing OWASP. For more than 7 years now he has been working with the chapter and mentored lot of folks. No wonder he is called "the web app security guy"."

Name: Dhiraj Mishra

Citation: "Dhiraj Mishra - has been contributed and volunteered to, OWASP Mumbai Student chapter and Mumbai local chapter.

He has endorse students to be part of multiple open community, however been an Sudent Chapter leader for OWASP he has discussed and shared multiple Information Security topics start from the scratch and spreading the idea's and awareness via chapter Meets, he has taken multiple session in NULL as well which runs with OWASP local chapter Mumbai, recently he invited Mozilla Club Mumbai to student chapter so that students can go to their area of interest, he always pushup/boost women in infosec. Apart from this he has taken various sessions in different colleges and have shared knowledge about Cyber Security."

Name: Denise Murtagh-Dunne

Citation: "Denise has been a hugely active member of the Dublin chapter and has been involved in all chapter meeting throughout the year and is ever keen to role up her sleeves and get stuck into work that others shy away from. This includes everything from setting up the meeting tools, organising venues, working with sponsors, getting speakers and assisting speakers in the run up and during events. She's been a very positively influence on the community and chapter and has encouraged other people to get involved. She's constantly updating and posting content on our social media accounts and making sure our members get relevant and interesting content. While in full time employment, Denise gives up family time to contribute to the chapter and ensure OWASP Dublin remains a vibrant and relevant group that engages the developer and security community locally."

Name: Owen Pendlebury

Citation: "Owen Pendlebury has been a key local OWASP volunteer over the last number of years. From being on the local Dublin chapter board to leading the Dublin chapter he regularly hosted and spoke at numerous collaborative and insightful security meetups.

He has also been involved in organising AppSec EU in Rome and more recently co-organised the Belfast conference which was the biggest ever EU conference. As part of organising the conference in Belfast he negotiated that all chapters within Ireland would benefit financially getting a percentage of the conference profits to allow the chapters to bring bigger, better and more collaborative meetings to the Irish OWASP community and grow the communities across the country.

I don’t know where he has found the time but has also been part of the Women in AppSec committee mentoring a number of individuals throughout the year. He took part in the Women in AppSec events in Belfast giving some insightful opinions into how improve attendees career. Owen is an asset that helps to improve Ireland's security community’s capabilities with a real can-do attitude."

Name: Mick Ryan

Citation: "Mick always assists with chapter meetings and works to ensure we give the community good quality sessions. Mick assists will all areas including reaching out to potential speakers, getting info and bios from them, arranging dates and venues, posting on social media and the logistics of the meetings and ensuring speakers have the right cables, meetings run to time, that speakers are happy with everything, taking photos to promote the chapter on social media, encouraging people to speak, printing the chapter and getting people to events! Thanks Mick for your contribution in 2017!"

Name: Sriram Shyam

Citation: "Sriram has been conducting awareness program to the college students. Sriram has created awareness among 12000 Students without the support of anyone."

Name: Michelle Simpson

Citation: "Michelle has done an amazing job with the Belfast chapter and works tirelessly to improve the OWASP community and advocate strong app sec practices. This is very evident from the people attending the chapter events, organisations participating and the very successful AppSecEU conference that was held in Belfast in 2017. Michelle put a huge amount of work and effort into planning and preparation for AppSecEU to ensure the conference was of a high calibre. This was a sustained commitment over the majority of 2017 on top of local chapter commitments. I'd like to nominate Michelle for all the hard work and effort she puts into the chapter. Thanks Michelle!"

'"'Name: Steve Springett

Citation: "Steve has been a tremendous supporter of the OWASP dependency-check project and leader on the related dependency-track platform. He is quick to respond to community question, answering with insightful and accurate responses assisting the community in their use of the dependency-check suite of tools."

Name: John Vargas

Citation: "During the last 9 years John, together with a very small group of volunteers, has been making efforts to keep the chapter of Lima, Peru. Performing activities such as monthly meetings, internal trainings and participating actively in the OWASP Latam Tour. For the chapters in Latin America to keep afloat these activities with few resources is something very complicated and deserves recognition."

Name: Tara Williams

Citation: "Tara cares about integrity, inclusion and transparency, she is passionate about making OWASP a better place for all members of the community. With her talents in communications, she is getting the word out about OWASP's benefits to community members and attracting new members to chapter meetings, especially identifying successful pathways to transition meetup members to full members."

Results

Coming July 25, 2017

Sponsorship Opportunities

The support from our sponsors, is what makes these awards truly successful!

Sponsorships coming soon!

Communication

1. June 7, 2017 Email to the Leaders & Community list. Posted to the OWASP Blog
2. June 30, 2017 Email to the Leaders & Community list.

Past WASPY Awards

2016
2015
2014
2013
2012