FTC Announces Agenda for First Start with Security Conference in San Francisco

Federal Trade Commission Chairwoman Edith Ramirez will provide the opening remarks at the FTC’s first Start with Security conference, being held Sept. 9 at the University of California Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco.

Featuring the experts that built security programs at Dropbox, Etsy, Pinterest, Twitter, and other high-growth startups, the San Francisco event will provide startups and developers with practical guidance on integrating security into their application development lifecycles.

As part of its longstanding efforts to promote good data security practices, the FTC has undertaken extensive efforts to educate businesses and has brought more than 50 law enforcement actions related to data security issues. Most recently, the FTC released Start with Security: A Guide for Business, which draws on the lessons learned from the FTC’s enforcement actions.

Building on these efforts, the San Francisco Start with Security conference will focus on the challenges that startups and developers face in creating secure applications. Panels will address how startups can build a culture of security, including how they can effectively model threats, train their developers, and ensure secure coding practices; scale security testing when they are growing rapidly and continuously iterating their products; respond when hackers find bugs in their products, including strategies for managing, addressing and learning from vulnerability reports; and embrace security features as a key part of their products.

In addition to the panel discussions, Arun Mathew, partner at venture capital firm Accel, will take part in a “fireside chat” on security issues with FTC Chief Technologist Ashkan Soltani.

The event will begin at 10 a.m. and continue until 4 p.m. A full schedule and panelist biographies, along with details on the location, can be found on the event’s webpage. No pre-registration is necessary, and the event is free and open to the public.

The University of California Hastings College of the Law is the co-sponsor of the event with the FTC. The next Start with Security event is on Nov. 5 in Austin, Texas.

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