S7 Bonus: The Death of Static Credentials: Architecting Hardware-Attested Device Identity with Mike Malone, Founder & CEO of Smallstep

Mike Malone is a nerd from way back (his words, not mine). In the 6th grade, he bought a Borland C book and learned how to code. Back when Napster was round, he hosted an open Nap server in his basement, and ran a few things on IRC. He graduated from Virginia Tech with a Business Information Systems degree, and worked for Accenture for a hot second... then joined a 3 person startup, and hasn't looked back since. He's married with 2 kids, and a dog - and he claims he collects hobbies, which is another way of saying he likes to try new things.

Mike's career has tracked along side the development of the cloud. He witnessed the security problems alongside distributed systems, and felt the pains of having to manage sensitive information. He and his team saw an opportunity here, and set out to fix the problem.

This is the creation story of Smallstep.