Episode Details

This conversation covers:

• How Frame.io was faced with the decision to be cloud native or cloud-enabled — and the business and technical reasons why Frame.io chose to be cloud native. 
• How Abhinav successfully built a world class cloud-native security program from the ground up to protect Frame.io users’ sensitive video content. Abhinav also talks about the special security considerations for truly cloud native applications. 
• Cloud native as a “journey without a destination.” In other words, there is no end point with cloud native transitions, because new technologies are always being developed.
• Why Abhinav is a firm believer in both ISEs and GitOps, and why he thinks the industry should embrace both of these strategies.
• The challenge of not only maintaining security in this type of environment, but also communicating security issues to various stakeholders with different priorities. Abinhav also talks about the role that specialists like AWS and machine learning experts can play in furthering security agendas.
• Common misconceptions about cloud native security.
• Frame.io’s decision to roll out Kubernetes, and why they are also considering adding chaos engineering to fortify against unexpected issues.
• Tool and vendor overload, and the importance of trying to find the right tools that fit your infrastructure. 

Links:

• Frame.io: https://frame.io/
• Connect with Abhinav on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/absri/
• The Business of Cloud Native: http://thebusinessofcloudnative.com 

Transcript

Announcer: Welcome to The Business of Cloud Native podcast where we explore how end users talk and think about the transition to Kubernetes and cloud-native architectures.

Emily: Welcome to The Business of Cloud Native. I'm Emily Omier, your host, and today I am chatting with Abhinav Srivastava. Abhinav, can you go ahead and introduce yourself and tell us about where you work, and what you do.

Abhinav: Thanks for having me, Emily. Hello, everyone. My name is Avinash Srivastava. I'm a VP and the head of information security and infrastructure at Frame.io. At Frame, I am building the security and infrastructure programs from ground up, making sure that we are secured and compliant, and our services are available and reliable. Before joining Frame.io, I spent a number of years in AT&T Research. There I worked on various cloud and security technologies, wrote numerous research papers, and filed patents. And before joining AT&T, I spent five great years in Georgia Tech on a Ph.D. in computer science. My dissertation was on cloud and virtualization security.

Emily: And what do you do? What does an average day look like?

Abhinav: Right. So, just to tell you where I answer the question where I work: so I work at Frame.io, and Frame.io is a cloud-based video review and collaboration startup that allows users to securely upload their video contents to our platform, and then invite teams and clients to collaborate on those uploaded assets. We are essentially building the video cloud, so you can think of us as a GitHub for videos. 

What I do when I get to office—apart from getting my morning coffee—as soon as I arrive at my desk, I check my calendar to see how's my day looking; I check my emails and slack messages. We use slack primarily within the company doing for communication. And then I do my daily standup with my teams. We follow a two-week sprint across all departments that I oversee. So, a standup gives me a good picture on the current priorities and any blockers.

Emily: Tell me a little bit about