OpenSourceSecurity

In this episode of What’s in the SOSS?, host Yesenia Yser sits down with open source security engineer and community leader Tabatha DiDomenico for an inspiring conversation about her unexpected path into open source, the vibrant communities behind security, and her role as president of BSides Orlando.

From discovering Netscape in the early days to shaping security strategy at G-Research and OpenSSF, Tabatha shares how her career evolved from necessity to purpose. She talks about the power of DevRel, the invisible work behind sustainable open source, and the magic of volunteering – pro-tip: working the registration table is great for networking.

Whether you’re new to the ecosystem or a seasoned contributor, this episode is packed with insight, warmth, and practical advice on getting involved and staying connected.

Topics Covered:

• The accidental beginnings of an open source career
• How DevRel supports healthy OSS ecosystems
• Building internal open source culture through innersource
• The impact of local security communities like BSides
• Advice for contributing, volunteering, and thriving in open source

00:00 The Journey into Open Source
06:10 Current Projects and Roles in Open Source
11:57 Involvement with B-Sides Orlando
18:07 Understanding Developer Relations in Open Source
27:08 Rapid Fire Questions and Final Thoughts

• Tabatha DiDomenico’s LinkedIn page
• Hacker Summer Camp
• Hacker in Heels
• Security B-sides Orlando
• Security B-sides Vegas
• The Diana Initiative
• Get involved with the OpenSSF
• Subscribe to the OpenSSF newsletter
• Follow the OpenSSF on LinkedIn

Intro music (00:00)

Tabatha (00:04)
I immediately felt at ease. And I was like, oh gosh, people think, just like me, they, you know, they are curious. They want to break things, they want to put things back together again, and they’re just so generous with their time.

Yesenia (00:18)
Hello and welcome to What’s in the SOSS? OpenSSF’s podcast where we are talking to interesting people through the open source ecosystem. My name is Yesenia Yser. I’m one of your hosts and today we have an incredible treat. I’m talking to a close colleague and an open source extraordinaire, Tabatha DiDomenico, a security engineer that works on our open source. Welcome Tabatha. Welcome to introduce yourself to the audience.

Tabatha (00:47)
So thank you so much for having me today. My name is Tabitha DiDomenico. I am an open source security engineer at G-Research. And it’s been exciting to be a part of OpenSSF in various working groups and capacities over the past couple of years.

Yesenia (01:04)
Welcome. So glad to have you and we’ll start off with one of my favorite questions. Can you tell us about your journey in open source? What sparked your interest and just how has it grown over time?

Tabatha (01:14)
So this is an interesting question. feel like when I reflect on my journey in open source, it doesn’t quite look like a journey because it was not an intentional thing. When I first began using open source, it was out of necessity. It’s what was available, probably thinking back to Netscape days. And that’s probably my first actual awareness that something was an open source project. A lot of the work that I did at the time, the organizations that I was with, the products that we used internally to power various organizations, we selected them because they were free and happened to be open source. when I think back to how has it been a journey over time, it’s become more intentional. My interest in open source has definitely become an intentional direction that I have set for my career.

You know, when I think back to those early days and using open source out of necessity rather than a desire to be, give back or to be part of something larger than myself or, and there was none of those sort of in intrinsic, lovely motivators that we had. was really just out of necessity. and over time I was fortunate enough to, to be in a position to work with WordPress. and that was sort of the next evolution of, of my engagement in open source. I had built a small agency for myself during WordPress development, website development, and also maintenance, and just getting familiar with the community and the resources that were available. It was not something that I had ever seen from any commercial software that I had been a part of. The large corporations don’t necessarily build these beautiful communities around their paid products. Some do.

But it’s incredibly rare, right? And so when I’d seen this, you know, that there was these word camps and that there was these hyper local conferences and events that people came together because of love for the product, love for the community, that was really compelling to me. From there, I had the incredible opportunity to actually get paid to work on open source through a product called the Dradis Framework, which pen testers in the security community may be familiar with, because it’s an open source penetration test writing tool – where it kind of got at start. The founder of the company is originally a pen tester, wrote this tool in-house. All of the other pen testers began using it. it was one of those products that once he open sourced it, the community thought, wow, this is really great. You’ve got something incredible here. Other people begin using it. It sort of became the case of, you know, if you build it, they will come, your users will come, but then the problem began of, how can you support this product in your spare time and still have a life? know, so that’s when, when he began to look into, you know, releasing it as a commercial product as well. and so that, you know, seeing the, that how community can build around open source and having a hand and starting to shape a community around a product and build a community around a paid version of a product, it further expanded my understanding of how open source can work and how open source can work in business. And then, and now I’m here with G-Research and working with organizations like the Linux Foundation and OpenSSF, going to events like FOSDEM and seeing the scale of open source and, you know, in our world and, and knowing that I I’ve involved somehow, it feels really cool. So, you know, now it’s definitely intentional. get paid to work in open source. it doesn’t necessarily look like me just, you know, writing PRs and pushing them all day long. Cause my work looks different. and that’s great. Cause it’s needed. Yeah. I’m not sure what else to add to that except for it’s been an incredible opportunity to witness the scale of open source and to get an understanding of the breadth of it. It’s fascinating to me and a lot of the challenges that we face in security around open source are complex and not easily solved and I like those kind of problems.

Yesenia (05:53)
Yeah, and just like you said, the scale of it just from, I think my first open source conference to like the latest, like just the number of tendons and people that are aware of them. It’s really great to see in the community. you know, thank you for your contributions and impact to make that happen. With that, I know you just mentioned earlier that you’re starting, you know, a new role. So I’d love for you to share any projects you’re currently working on and just what excites you the most about it.

Tabatha (06:22)
So a lot of my role, a lot of the work in my organization is, I feel like more of like an ecologist than anything else, an open source ecologist. How do I, while my title is open source security engineer, a lot of the work that I do is to support and be good, help our organization be good stewards of the open source projects that are important to us or that we value in some way. And so how do I speak for an open source project in their community and ensure that how we’re interacting with that community is appropriate, that our vision aligns with the vision of the community itself and the direction of the product of the open source component and how do I, know, how can I best connect our internal resources with projects that I see could benefit by that support is sort of the crux of my work and to making it, how do we responsibly and securely contribute and participate in open source ecosystems? It is, it is. And especially if you have a culture and an organization that’s not necessarily

Yesenia (07:42)
It’s big challenge in scenarios today.

Tabatha (07:45)
the most familiar with working in an open source way. So some of our recent projects have been, you know, looking at, you know, perhaps an inner source initiative and getting our starts start there and, and encouraging folks that have never contributed to an open source project before a bit of confidence in working and collaborating with others in an open source way internally before they take that next step and start thinking about pushing things upstream.

Yesenia (08:20)
Yeah, because it’s interesting because it’s a whole different culture when you’re going from internal into an external phase. so building that culture inside to then take it out, I think is a smart way and approach to do it. Yeah.

Tabatha (08:34)
Yeah, yeah. So that’s been, that’s been one of the very fun project to work on and just like I said, connecting folks with projects and solutions that I believe will solve the challenges they’re having or can help point them in a better direction to solve the challenges that they’re having.

Yesenia (08:53)
Yeah, and outside of that, it just sounds like you do a lot for open source, but you know folks like us we just add more hats to ourselves. You are the president of BSides Orlando. It was a great conference. Definitely attended last last year’s and I’m sure you are preparing for this year. How did you get it? You have to your head. How did you get involved with the organization and what’s next on your agenda for that like?

Tabatha (09:21)
So this is a fun story and speaks to more how I really embraced that I was working in security already without it being so much of a title as I was invited to attend Security BSides Orlando 2014. And just to back up for our audience here, that may not be familiar with the Security BSides framework. It was born, I believe, in 2011. And it comes from the desire to elevate additional voices, to get folks involved in participating in information security, and to create space for newcomers and to bring smaller, have smaller events that are more local to a community, to bring speakers in to that community. I’m not explaining it well. I’d like to probably try that again. So the BSides security BSides framework started in around 2011 and it was a group of individuals that recognized that there was a number of speakers that kept returning to the stages of the larger security conferences. And so they looked to have a BSides version of those larger security conferences that was organized by the community that brought people in and speakers and information in that the local community wanted to hear or needed to hear by the, by the judgment of the organizers, and has grown from there. It is not an official organization that’s like run globally. There’s no, you know, contract that we have to sign. don’t pay dues up to any sort of umbrella organization. It’s a, while there is an organization in, know, that’s registered as Security BSides each Security BSides event. And I believe the last count or last look.

I looked at it was over 200 events annually around the world is organized by the community in that area. So it’s, it makes it it’s a community’s conference is how I think about it and how I discuss it when we’re, when we’re talking about planning security besides Orlando. So as I was, I was getting back to wanting to share was my story is how I got involved.

I was invited to attend. A friend of mine had been telling me for a while that I was doing security, that I should consider looking into security as a career change for myself and to maybe go that direction. And if nothing else, that I would enjoy the community. So I attended BSides Orlando 2014. And I’ve shared this story on stage a couple of times. I picked my first lock at that conference and it’s like the lockpicking village to information security job pipeline just took hold. But it was more than that. It was more than just picking lock. It was the willingness of the other attendees and the organizers to share information. It was, I’m getting chills now thinking about it.

Yesenia (12:01)
You got me chills. like, I’m gonna, I am like,

Tabatha (12:03)
That’s how I felt as I walked in and I was greeted by John Singer Who who I don’t know if you know John Singer But he it feels like everybody knows him at least yeah, especially if you’re in the Florida cyber security world It’s hard not to know John Singer but either he was just so welcoming and here’s this guy who was organized this this huge conference in this area and and my first interaction with him was nothing but just welcoming and it’s so, it can be so scary when you’re walking into a new environment like that, a new space, even if you have somebody encouraging you to be there and with you. but I immediately felt that ease and I was like, my gosh, these people think just like me, they, know, they, they are curious. They want to break things. They want to things back together again. And they’re just so generous with their time with the goal of.

Yesenia (12:57)
Mm-hmm. helping others.

Tabatha (12:58)
Helping others, yeah. mean, there’s no, yeah, hacking is, you know, that’s cool and it’s a cool thing to be involved in, but it’s more than that. know, for the folks that I’m drawn to and for the communities that I’m drawn to, there is this sense of, yes, I need to do this work and also I’m doing this work because it is meaningful to me and I recognize that this meaningful work, despite our differences, is bettering your life too. And I think that’s great.

Yesenia (13:31)
Yeah, it’s one of my favorite things about the security communities. You one of the first communities I got involved in was security and everyone was so welcoming that I was just, I was always applauded when they’re like, you know, they knew all the negatives in the space. And I was like, really? Everyone’s been so welcoming and nice and the tech community and open source like that. So I definitely resonate with that. And lockpicking was one of the first things when I started security, they’re like, you can’t start.

You can’t start your first ticket until you lockpick this. So they gave me like a kit and like three different locks and levels and they’re like, all right, we’ll start you off though. So if anyone’s interested in security, you you got to pick your first lock. You got it.

Tabatha (14:20)
Yeah, I think that’s the, that’s, that’s the direct route I took all the time, but I, I’m sure that there’s others out there that have gotten their start in cybersecurity after, after picking their first lock at a BSides event, just like I did. but yeah, it’s, it’s, I know that, that it exists. know that toxic behavior exists in information security and obviously, know, in my time, you know, in the years that I have been involved, in, this industry I have seen the numbers improve with regards to diversity and folks being accountable for their actions and holding others in the community accountable for their actions. So I don’t want to discount that it can be a difficult place sometimes, both working in security and working in the open source world. But by and large, that has not been my experience. My experience has been more similar to yours, where most of the folks that I have engaged with have been more than happy to sit with me and explain a difficult concept or a new approach or most of the time they’re just excited to share whatever thing they’re nerding out about and yeah.

Yesenia (15:27)
That’s it, we just wanna geek out with one now. Like, my god, did you see this new cool thing? Let’s play with it.

Tabatha (15:33)
Yeah. Yeah. We figured out this new way of doing things. can enumerate blah, blah, blah faster. Like, let me show you to do. Okay, great. You know, um, or if I’ve got questions, they’re, they’re always more than, more than willing to, to jump in and help. Um, and from, yeah. So from there, uh, I, I think that was, like I said, it was 2014 later that year. went to my first DEF CON, which is a whole, uh, a whole thing. It’s a, and I found much the same thing. You know, I found, I found that.

The community was very welcoming and here’s all these people that, you know, have lived very different lives and have very different experiences from my own. And still we’re, we’re aiming to solve similar problems and working together seems like the best way to do that. that year, funnily enough, I had worked with others that had been working. So I went to hacker summer camp that year, that first time.

with others that were paid to do security. That was their job, right? I was still there on my own dime. And there’s a conference, there’s a couple of conferences earlier in the week. One of them is Black Hat, and Black Hat is, you know, the more corporate version of the security week, other security conferences out there. And I couldn’t afford to go. So I looked around and I was like, well, surely there has to be a BSides or something. So I looked at the BSides Las Vegas and they were still receiving volunteer applications. I applied and I volunteered that first year at BSides Las Vegas and I was hooked. That was all it took for me to just fall in love even further with the security community. And from there, it was a couple years before I could come back and get engaged. it was 29 BSides Orlando 2019. I came on as staff and I ran registration desk for the event that day. And night.

If you want to meet everybody at the conference that you are attending, I recommend volunteering to work at the registration desk, because that is a fast track networking opportunity. And from there, I became on board in 2020. And then I was nominated and elected to take over as the president of BSides Orlando. I think it was the next year. We were still not quite cleared from COVID to be able to have an on-site event.

But 2022, we returned on site and have been organizing an event annually since then. this year will be my fourth BSides Orlando event as the president. Yeah.

Yesenia (18:09)
Nice. Yeah, it was a great event. I had so much fun there. I did the badge soldering. I went to everything. Thank you for sharing that. was such a… And for those that… I know you had mentioned Hackers Summer Camp, just for those that aren’t aware, Hackers Summer Camp is a week long in Vegas where there’s multiple security conferences. You have Black Hat, BSides, Def Con, Squid Con.

Tabatha (18:33)
Dianna Initiative.

Yesenia (18:35)
And Diana initiative there, there might be others that pop up. I know hacker in heels. They have their own salon that kind of runs there too, for like women networking events in cybersecurity. So if you’re a security professional, those are. Yeah. Worth the money.

Tabatha (18:48)
So definitely check it out. There’s a lot of ways to get out there too if you don’t have the funds to attend and maybe we can share some of those resources at some point.

Yesenia (19:00)
Yeah, maybe in the description, we’ll figure that out. I know you just transitioned over to security engineer, but before that you were doing dev rel developer relationships. And this is kind of like a new space just over on the industry with the last couple of years. What role does dev rel play in open source ecosystem? just someone new that’s coming in, if this is something that interests them, how could they get started and start contributing meaningfully?

Tabatha (19:22)
That’s a great question. DevRel is a bit challenging to sort of define, because each organization does Developer Relations a little bit differently. I know for our organization it, it really, like I said before, it’s sort of acting as the ecologist between the open source ecosystems that we’re involved in, our internal communities and engineers and, you know, acting as sort of the steward between the two, for what that actually looks like in practice, it’s for my job. Up it was it is to be good stewards of the projects that we publish and to ensure that the work that we’re putting out in the world is as high quality as possible, that it makes it that, that the project is ready to receive users, contributors, even would be lovely for many of these projects, and those sorts of the sort of work that needs to be done to in court, encourage new adoption of a project, or to encourage new contributors, or to encourage an existing contributor, to consider Thinking about becoming maintainer and taking on additional responsibility. It requires somebody who’s not necessarily bogged down in doing triaging PRs and doing code reviews. It takes time away. It takes time to sit down and be thoughtful about how do we want to encourage contributions? Do we have a solid contributing guide? Do we have it? Do we make it clear how to get started with even an issue? Do we make it clear on how to be involved in this project? Advocacy for a project, if you recognize that there’s a project that needs just more awareness, like I said before, not all projects are like greatest where you build it, they will come oftentimes, projects you know, that are either a hobby project or something that’s new. It needs that, that awareness building you need. It’s difficult to stumble across a new project, sometimes, just because of the there’s so much out there, you know, how do you make heads or tails of it. So doing work for advocacy, doing work where I’m advocating for various frameworks, perhaps that like open SSF has established through something like s 2c 2f to understand how to best consume open source into your into your organization, advocating internally for using additional things like salsa, you know, and understanding the different different paths to Sally and how that could interplay in your organization. Or even, you know, going out and talking about Sally so other or people at that work at other organizations have knowledge of these various tools, frameworks and projects that are to are there to enable folks to do the work of building open source and being secure while doing while working in open source.

Yesenia (22:36)
Yeah, it’s awesome. I know OpenSSF has the DevRel community meeting that happens once a month. I think it’s a great call for folks that are interested to come in and see what the group is working on.

Tabatha (22:49)
Yeah. And there’s lots of opportunities. know, each of the, each of the working groups that OpenSSF has, there’s brilliant people working on solving really challenging problems. Once those problems are solved, technically there’s still is this, this bit of advocacy that needs to happen there. You you have to take that project and then promote it a bit to get more adopters because without feedback on how this actually works in practice, it’s, you know, it’s not always, you’re not getting the best product project or outcomes because the diversity of opinion is so low. And there’s many different ways to solve all of these problems. So the more of us that come together to share how this works in practice, the better we can make it for all of us.

Yesenia (23:31)
And test it too, I think you just got into a good point. Sometimes we just need people to use it and see, does the guide make sense? Like that was one of the things that hurt me the most when I would pull a new open source tool was the user guide. And I’m just like, they had all these dependencies installed and I had to figure out which ones to install. And I’m like, can we just add this? Like, what do I need installed before? If I got a brand new computer, what do I need? know, just to start. cool.

Tabatha (24:00)
Yeah, that’s one of those things. We work with major league hacking, MLH, and I have a Developer Relations fellow each semester. Yeah, great Org If your organization has the ability to get involved with MLH, I encourage you to do so. And if you’re listening to this and you’re a candidate to become an MLH fellow, I encourage you to do it. It’s been, every single one of the fellows that has come through our doors has been just top notch.

So that aside, it can be a challenge to introduce DevRel to somebody who’s young and excited about working in open source and they’re chomping at the bit to solve their first technical issue and get to coding, right? And then you have to break it to them. That’s not what we’re doing. We’re doing all of the other stuff, the in-between stuff that has to get done in order for people to actually use this.

Uh, and then, you know, they’re just kind of like, Oh, well that, that doesn’t sound nearly as interesting. And then I, I’ve, then I, you know, I kind of do this thing where I’m like, well, do you use any open source in your, know, in your own time and your hobby projects? Have you ever released anything? Do you, you know, have you ever gone and tried to play like an open source game? Is there anything that you’ve seen before? And sometimes they’ll come in and we’ll have, you know, definitely a very clear opinion about open source.

And sometimes they’ll come back and look at it, you it just kind of is the thing. But inevitably I always hear back that they have a greater appreciation for good documentation after having worked with us to do DevRel because they see the value in it now. They understand that it doesn’t just happen. There’s no just like running AI on it to generate, you know, quality documentation. Maybe somebody out there has a tool that does it brilliantly now.

But it’s unlikely. There’s always nuance to these things. So I think that exposure to DevRel creates a different sort of appreciation for the invisible work, the labor that has to go into open source in order for it to flourish and thrive and to give open source projects the best chance at success in the environments that they’re in.

Yesenia (26:16)
There’s so much behind it people just think it’s coding. I’m like no we can use so much more help Great let’s move on to the rapid-fire part of the interview I’m gonna shoot the questions first comes mine and we’ll keep flowing. So first question Star Wars or Star Trek?

Tabatha (26:21)
Star Wars.

Yesenia (26:30)
Early bird or night owl.

Tabatha (26:42)
Ooh, both, depends on the day.

Yesenia (26:45)
Okay, I’ll take it. get that. get that books or podcasts.

Tabatha (26:51)
I would say, see, I finished a master’s program a couple years ago and I’m still recovering from having to read all of that. That’s happened to every time I’ve gotten a degree. So I’m going to go podcasts, but normally in better, not, not graduate level brain still, it would be books. Yeah. Yes.

Yesenia (27:10)
Yeah, your brain burns out. I get that. Like, it’s just recent where I’ve been able to like pick up a book and like, pretty much become addicted to it. Like, I can’t do anything else until I’m done with the book. It’s great.

Tabatha (27:21)
That’s great. I miss being at that level with a new book. So hopefully soon.

Yesenia (27:27)
Took me years. I couldn’t pick up books, but I have a huge library. Last one, spicy or mild food.

Tabatha (27:33)
spicy, absolutely spicy. Yeah. Yeah. I grew up between, I grew up between Texas and South Florida. So it’s spicy all the way.

Yesenia (27:44)
You got it, best of both worlds. Well, thank you for your time. I want to give you space to leave any last minute advice, thoughts for the audience.

Tabatha (27:54)
I’d say any last minute advice or thoughts. I would say get involved. Don’t be afraid. It’s not as scary as it seems and show up in person if there’s an event near you. Excuse me. Let me try that again. So I think that.

Tabatha (28:39)
I think my final thoughts on this would be to get involved in the community because that’s really where I have found the most benefit for myself personally. Reach out, get an understanding of the project. If you’re curious about getting involved and you’re a little nervous to get started and are unsure, even if those good first issues look too scary to you, hop on a community call. If there’s a contributing call, just go and lurk. Attend something where you are engaging in other people engaging with other people and not only the code base because that’s really where you’re going to get more insights on how everything gets put together, how everything works, how the project works and how the community works together and whether or not you actually want to be a part of that community before you get involved. So I say jump in.

Yesenia (28:39)
Totally jump in and volunteer for events too. think that’s another great volunteer. Well, thank you for your leadership and contributions to our communities. You know, many thanks to our listeners and our open source contributors and the community of folks that help drive all of our projects forward. Tabatha, I appreciate your time today and I look forward to seeing all your impact in 2025. Thank you.

Tabatha (28:44)
Volunteer friends. Yeah, absolutely.

Tabatha (28:47)
Thank you, Yesenia, It was great chatting with you today.