Tony Perez On Security, Business, And Life
Recently I spoke at WordCamp US 2015 on the topic WordPress Security — Navigating Today’s Website Threats!!
WordPress is one of the most recognized website CMS platform available in the market. Dominating over 25% of the websites on the web, and over 50% of the CMS-based websites, it’s no surprise that it’s the preferred technology by marketers, sales professionals, small and large business alike, and those intent on nefarious actions.
Almost five years ago, Joost started the company Yoast, offering website reviews and free plugins. Yoast’s core business was, and is, sharing knowledge and making it easier to create usable websites. Five years later Yoast has turned into one of the biggest WordPress plugin providers with 21 employees (and counting)!
To celebrate reaching five years, awesome growth, and much success, Yoast celebrated with a conference: YoastCon!
The conference was held in de Lindenberg in Nijmegen, with myself, Chris Lema, Marcus Tandler, Karl Gilis, and Joost de Valk speaking, and Marieke van de Rakt, Thijs de Valk, and Taco Verdonschot giving workshops.
My talk was on the current state of WordPress security. There is no denying that WordPress, powering over 23.5% of the top websites in the world, has become the platform of choice for bloggers and businesses alike.
With this fame however, WordPress has become a target, making it the top targeted platform on the web by malicious actors with ill intent.
This May I was thrilled to travel to Prague, Czech Republic as a keynote speaker for J And Beyond 2015, An International Joomla Conference to deliver the talk The Dynamic and Complicated Online Threats (Challenges Website Owners Face). I was also thrilled to have my company, Sucuri, sponsor the event.
After investing the better part of five years analyzing and assessing the state of security within the realm of websites, I travel the world engaging website owners in an effort to address the security challenges webmasters face today through education and awareness. The website landscape continues to evolve, affecting website owners around the world. We have to take a minute to look at the website landscape, appreciate the nuances that the end-users are struggling with and look forward at what the future holds for us.
The purpose of the talk is a high level orientation of the existing threat landscape affecting all website-owners, especially those leveraging CMS applications like Joomla!
Check out the video of my presentation below:
Recently I spoke at WordCamp Minneapolis 2015 on Building and Running a Global Workforce: The People Aspect of a Remote Company. While I usually speak about security, in this talk I share the challenges of a remote work force and speak about people issues, culture, growth challenges, scaling, and everything in between.
In June of 2014, I stepped into the role of CEO of Sucuri. In the presentation, I also share some of the lessons we have learned at Sucuri throughout the past five years of doing business at a global scale.
Check out the video of my presentation:
Recently I spoke at WordCamp Europe 2014 on the topic WordPress Security — It Starts With Posture. The threats website owners face today range in scale and complexity — from large DDOS attacks leveraging WordPress core functionality, to vulnerabilities found in some of the largest plugins in the ecosystem.
The Security dilemma is not shrinking, it’s getting bigger.
Today more than ever, it’s important we take the time to educate and bring awareness to the things everyday website owners can do to improve their over security posture.
Web security is not a turn of a knob, or click of an option, it’s about state of mind — it’s about good posture.
Check out the video of my presentation:
Recently I had the opportunity to share my insights from the past five years working at Sucuri at WordCamp Chicago 2014 held at the University Center in downtown Chicago.
My talk, WordPress Security: It’s All About the Basics, focused on experiences with end-user security issues and threats in the web security industry.
With the goal of greater awareness of security issues for website owners, I share information about the latest security threats and trends, what to watch out for and be careful of, and as always some (hopefully valuable) takeaways and recommendations for the future.
Check out the video of my presentation:
This past weekend, I had the opportunity to speak about WordPress Security at WordCamp Philly 2014 as part of the Power User Track.
It’s critical to understand that the key to website security is awareness — and that is exactly what we achieve in this talk.
Getting down to the basics and sharing insight that very few can share through the experiences we have ascertained at Sucuri. The latest threats and trends will be shared, and of course, some good, hardening takeaways and recommendations.
Checkout the video of my presentation:
Recently I spoke at WordCamp Minneapolis 2014 on The Basics Of WordPress Security.
At the event, I pulled double duty and also participated in a panel discussion on Commercial WordPress Products moderated by Kiko Doran with:
In this panel discussion we all answer some pointed questions by Kiko about our opinions and experiences selling commercial WordPress products.
Check out the video of the panel discussion and thanks for Paul Lampland for snapping this great photo!
Over the years, I have seen and experienced an amazing amount of security threats, vulnerabilities, malware attacks, and other problems website owners face. Recently I had the opportunity to speak at WordCamp Minneapolis 2014 on The Basics of WordPress Security, specifically targeted for the website owner or end user.
In this presentation, I share insights into security threats and trends site owners should be aware of, provide tips and recommendations on keeping your website secure, and share some of my experiences and insights from working at Sucuri.
I also participated in a panel discussion on Commercial WordPress Products with Reid Peifer, Marc Benzakein, Carl Hancock, and Ben Fox that was moderated by Kiko Doran.
Check out the video of my presentation and thanks to Matt Porath for snapping this great photo!
This month I joined my business partner Dre Armeda at WordCamp Las Vegas 2013 to speak about web security.
Our presentation, titled Real WordPress Security, Kill The Noise! cut through the false sense of security many website owners enjoy to address the real security issues, threats, and vulnerabilities facing WordPress websites and their owners.
But don’t worry — it’s not all doom and gloom.
While we address the issues, we also provide tips and recommendations on how you can secure your website and our no nonsense approach to reducing risk with WordPress.
Check out the video of the presentation:
This evening I will be giving a presentation at WordSesh at midnight PST (0800 UTC).
This goal of this presentation is to learn from hacks as the name implies. It’s fairly straight forward to talk about hardening and malware, it’s something different all together to understand the attackers. That’s what this presentation attempts to do in a very short time period (45 minutes). In it I share two scenarios that were recently analyzed at my company, Sucuri.
Here is the presentation I’ll be giving and the video:
Here is an online presentation I gave at WordSesh 2013. Always weird when you give an online presentation, unable to gauge the crowd and respond accordingly. Look forward to your feedback.
I’ll be in Miami this weekend, for WordCamp Miami 2013, giving a new, updated talk on Website Security. Come by and say hi if you’re around — If you’re not, no problem, I’ve included my slides below in this post for your reference.
My talk is titled Staying of the Website Threats and Becoming One with Malware. In it, I talk about the latest threats and things you can do to help yourself and your site stay secure. The idea is to educate and in the process, help you gain a deeper appreciation for the underbelly of the web and the realities of the web based malware.
In December I had the opportunity to speak at WordCamp Las Vegas 2012 on the topic of WordPress Security, Dealing with Today’s Hacks.
Every day there are new hacks that come online and the problem is affecting everyone. If you or a friend have found yourself at a tail end of a hack then then this talk is for you.
In this talk, I speak about the prominent WordPress hacks, how they affect and leverage WordPress resources and more importantly how to detect and remove, including Backdoors, Pharma Hack, Injections, and Malicious Redirects. I will also introduce you to working with Google Webmaster and how to deal with “Your site maybe be compromised” warnings in the Google’s search engine results pages.
While this talk will employ the use of terminal commands, it’s delivered in a way that end-users can understand, with instructions on how to navigate your host CPANEL configuration to make it work for you, as well as steps that will help you protect yourself from these hacks.
Check out the video on my presentation:
This weekend I’ll be jumping on a jet plane again — this time to WordCamp Baltimore 2012 happening September 8 at the Maryland Science Center.
I’ll be joining my business partner Dre Armeda and development partner Brad Williams for a WordPress Security panel, where we’ll be answering YOUR questions about security, WordPress, and keeping your site safe.
This panel will be similar to the one Mark Jaquith provided at WordCamp San Francisco 2011, but different as you might imagine with Dre, Brand, and I at the helm.
I was fortunate enough to be accepted to talk at WordCamp Chicago 2012 on WordPress Security, The Nitty Gritty as part of the Advanced Developer Track.
In this presentation I talk about web security, WordPress, and how they co-exist. this is an expansion on previous presentations, updating it with the latest trends and sharing more insight into hardening techniques.
My goal is to take the things I learn every day and wrap up into one 50 minute presentation of pure awesomeness.
Although the topic is similar to my previous talk, security changes so rapidly, that there is always something new to learn and be aware of. The web malware problem is growing and the information simply can’t get into the hands of end-users fast enough.
Get a full recap of my talk over on the Sucuri blog and thanks to Emily Barney for snapping this great photo.
Check out the video of my presentation:
I was a great experience giving the WordPress Security presentation at WordCamp Orange County this year.
Big shout out to the organizers, Brandon Dove, Jeffrey Zinn and Robert Nienhaus.
Thanks to Daniel Cid, Mark Jaquith, Andrew Nacin, and Dre Armeda for taking time to review and provide guidance.
For those interested, here are the slides from the presentation. Hope to get a copy of the video and will include that when they are published.
So this is kind of cool, my submission to talk at WordCamp Orange County was accepted.
What makes it extra cool is that with the number of WordCamps I have attended, this is my first time speaking. Don’t get me wrong, if you have spent time with me at the after party or any of the socials, you know talking is not my problem — especially if on a subject I am passionate about.
What most don’t realize though, is that I was only recently introduced to WordPress and its communities (January of 2010). That’s when my brother-in-law, Dre Armeda, introduced me to the platform and all the other goodness that comes with it (i.e., tacos and fizzypops). Since, it has been an exciting roller coaster of an experience.