---
aliases: ["Podcast recording — 2024-11-07"]
Is A: Event
Date: "2024-11-07"
Belongs to: "[[2024-11]]"
Related to: ["[[person-katja-mueller]]"]
Tags: ["Work", "Podcast"]
---
# Podcast recording — 2024-11-07
Recorded episode with Katja Mueller. Great conversation.

## Notes
- Episode theme: security engineering as a first-class discipline — moving beyond compliance checklists to building genuinely secure software from the ground up
- Katja walked through her approach to embedding security engineers directly into product teams rather than keeping them siloed in a centralized security org, including the political challenges of getting buy-in from engineering managers who saw it as overhead
- Her background as a former penetration tester turned security engineering director gave her stories a visceral quality — she could describe exactly how attackers think and why that perspective needs to be present during design, not just review
- Strong episode with real depth; Katja does not sugarcoat the current state of application security and is willing to say that most companies are doing it wrong
- Standout quote: "If your security team only talks to engineering during a pentest report readout, you do not have a security program. You have a security theater program"
- Audio quality was very good; Katja recorded from her company's podcast room in Berlin

## Follow-up
- [ ] Send thank-you email to Katja
- [ ] Draft show notes with the embedded security team model she described
- [ ] Schedule editing with [[person-paco-furiani]]
- [ ] Create social media clips — the security theater quote will resonate widely
