AppSec Phoenix Welcomes Cybersecurity Nicole Becher

AppSec Phoenix is honoured to welcome Nicole in its advisory board. Nicole brings the industry knowledge from S&P and technology from Google
Vandana Advisory Board

Nicole’s expertise in cybersecurity community involvement and unique perspective will help the risk vulnerability management platform bolster its security capabilities and knowledge as it looks toward a seed funding campaign

LONDON, England (October 3, 2021)— AppSec Phoenix, an innovative risk-based vulnerability management software specialized in software and cloud security, has announced the addition of Nicole Becher to its board. Nicole brings almost two decades of experience spanning financial services and technology, including Google, S&P Platts, and NYU and an adjunct professor. Nicole brings domain, industry and technology knowledge to AppSec Phoenix’s advisory group, helping the company remain focused on the core offering of Software security.

Nicole is currently the Security Engineering Manager at Google. Nicole has also held senior positions at S&P Platts, where she saw first-hand how Phoenix Security could make her role much more accessible. As Adjunct Instructor at New York University and Yeshiva University, she delivers technical insights to new generations. Nicole teaches offensive and defensive computer security, network security, web application security, and computer forensics courses. She is a project leader for OWASP DevSlop Project (Open Web Application Security Project).

She also worked on various policy initiatives, including cyber and regulatory policy for the New York State Department of Financial Services. At NYSDFS, she helped draft the first-in-nation regulatory framework for assessing the cybersecurity of large and complex financial institutions and draft the first-in-nation regulatory and licensing framework for bitcoin and virtual currency companies.

“We are excited to get such a cybersecurity leader and technology on board,” noted Francesco Cipollone, CEO and founder of AppSec Phoenix. “Nicole’s technical experience, domain knowledge and honest, straightforward talk align with AppSec Phoenix’s principles. We are honoured that such a leader in the industry recognized the value of our product and was eager to join a growing and thriving startup.”

“I am thrilled to join AppSec Phoenix’s advisory board as the company looks to build its expertise and capabilities in the risk vulnerability sector,” said Nicole. “I’m passionate about enabling organizations to secure the environment and remove frictions between engineers, developers and executives, and I see AppSec Phoenix addressing exactly that gap. AppSec Phoenix helps organizations do this by enabling secure delivery quickly, linking application risks to business risks, and empowering developers to take charge of vulnerability management in a proactive way.”

Vandana joins an advisory board that boasts several notable names in the cybersecurity sector, including:

  • Kevin Fielder, who has more than 20 years of extensive experience spanning financial services, payments, and online retail, excels in building and leading high-performing teams while effectively engaging boards around cyber risk and resilience. Fielder is currently the Chief Information Security Officer at FNZ Group and has held similar chief security roles at other companies in the UK. Fielder has created and delivered highly successful security strategies aligned to business needs and risk tolerance throughout his career.
  • Robert Rodgers brings a wealth of security and IT knowledge to the Phoenix Security board from the client perspective. He has worked in the financial industry since 1995. Rodgers currently serves as an executive of Butterfield Group. His experience includes former deputy CISO of HSBC Bank, security lead of Bank of Scotland, and global head of IT security of Bank of Bermuda. Rodgers brings a straightforward and no-frills perspective to the project with a pragmatic view of cybersecurity from the client-side.
  • Xabi Errotabehere has more than 20 years of experience building world-class digital products. He co-founded Cloud Conformity, a Cloud Security Posture Management tool, and took the company in a high-growth mode before Trend Micro acquired it in 2019. Errotabehere brings insight into how to successfully manage a business in its early days and techniques to market and acquire clients effectively. 
  • Andrew Peterson, who led Signal Science, a leading cybersecurity product, for five years before it sold to Fastly for $775M. Peterson brings startup knowledge, international support, exposure to the US market, and critical introductions to customers. His insight into the American market and its current trends and his contacts with venture capitalists provide valuable insight to the advisory team. He also advises several companies, and he has been instrumental in delivering Security Phoenix with critical recommendations on how to get a head start in product startup and potential pitfalls.

To learn more about AppSec Phoenix or to schedule a free demo, visit https://www.phoenix.security/request-a-demo/.

Francesco is an internationally renowned public speaker, with multiple interviews in high-profile publications (eg. Forbes), and an author of numerous books and articles, who utilises his platform to evangelize the importance of Cloud security and cutting-edge technologies on a global scale.

Discuss this blog with our community on Slack

Join our AppSec Phoenix community on Slack to discuss this blog and other news with our professional security team

From our Blog

The Miasma npm worm is back with a second wave targeting 57 packages and 647,204 monthly downloads. Wave 2 drops lifecycle hooks and executes through binding.gyp, bypassing every scanner watching package.json. No CVE exists. The threat actor pivoted within 72 hours of public disclosure of Wave 1.
Claire Harwood
IronWorm is a Rust-built npm supply chain worm that distributed a 976 KB eBPF rootkit and Tor C2 across 37 packages from a single compromised account, with no CVE assigned. It uses npm’s own Trusted Publishing OIDC flow to mint publish credentials from CI runners and self-replicate. CVE-based scanners had zero detection surface at the point of compromise.
Daniel Reeves
On June 1, 2026, 32 packages in the @redhat-cloud-services npm scope — totalling 116,991 weekly downloads — were backdoored by Miasma, a new Shai-Hulud variant that steals credentials across AWS, GCP, Azure, and Kubernetes through a preinstall hook. No CVE exists. Every malicious version passed npm Trusted Publishing validation using legitimate OIDC-issued tokens, leaving CVE-dependent scanners with zero detection surface during the active exposure window.
Francesco Cipollone
AI now generates working exploits in 10–15 minutes. Verizon’s DBIR confirms software vulnerabilities have overtaken stolen credentials as the top breach entry point. The NCSC and Bank of England have formally demanded automated, at-scale remediation. This analysis breaks down why traditional vulnerability management is broken, what the 2026 supply-chain attack catalogue tells us, and how to close the tap and burn down the backlog before the patch wave hits.
Marcus Webb
TrapDoor is an active supply chain campaign hitting npm, PyPI, and Crates.io simultaneously — 34 malicious packages, 384 artifact versions, confirmed since May 19, 2026. The campaign steals SSH keys, AWS credentials, GitHub tokens, and crypto wallet keystores, while silently poisoning AI coding assistants through hidden zero-width Unicode injected into .cursorrules and CLAUDE.md files. Zero CVEs assigned. Standard scanners return zero findings.
Sarah Mitchell
An attacker with push access to the Laravel-Lang GitHub organization force-rewrote 700+ git tags across 4 Composer packages on May 22, 2026, injecting an RCE backdoor that fires on every PHP application boot. No CVE was assigned — version pinning offered zero protection. The attack stole CI/CD, cloud, and Kubernetes credentials in 3.16 seconds flat.
Francesco Cipollone
Derek

Derek Fisher

Head of product security at a global fintech

Derek Fisher – Head of product security at a global fintech. Speaker, instructor, and author in application security.

Derek is an award winning author of a children’s book series in cybersecurity as well as the author of “The Application Security Handbook.” He is a university instructor at Temple University where he teaches software development security to undergraduate and graduate students. He is a speaker on topics in the cybersecurity space and has led teams, large and small, at organizations in the healthcare and financial industries. He has built and matured information security teams as well as implemented organizational information security strategies to reduce the organizations risk.

Derek got his start in the hardware engineering space where he learned about designing circuits and building assemblies for commercial and military applications. He later pursued a computer science degree in order to advance a career in software development. This is where Derek was introduced to cybersecurity and soon caught the bug. He found a mentor to help him grow in cybersecurity and then pursued a graduate degree in the subject.

Since then Derek has worked in the product security space as an architect and leader. He has led teams to deliver more secure software in organizations from multiple industries. His focus has been to raise the security awareness of the engineering organization while maintaining a practice of secure code development, delivery, and operations.

In his role, Jeevan handles a range of tasks, from architecting security solutions to collaborating with Engineering Leadership to address security vulnerabilities at scale and embed security into the fabric of the organization.

Jeevan Singh

Jeevan Singh

Founder of Manicode Security

Jeevan Singh is the Director of Security Engineering at Rippling, with a background spanning various Engineering and Security leadership roles over the course of his career. He’s dedicated to the integration of security practices into software development, working to create a security-aware culture within organizations and imparting security best practices to the team.
In his role, Jeevan handles a range of tasks, from architecting security solutions to collaborating with Engineering Leadership to address security vulnerabilities at scale and embed security into the fabric of the organization.

James

James Berthoty

Founder of Latio Tech

James Berthoty has over ten years of experience across product and security domains. He founded Latio Tech to help companies find the right security tools for their needs without vendor bias.

christophe

Christophe Parisel

Senior Cloud Security Architect

Senior Cloud Security Architect

Chris

Chris Romeo

Co-Founder
Security Journey

Chris Romeo is a leading voice and thinker in application security, threat modeling, and security champions and the CEO of Devici and General Partner at Kerr Ventures. Chris hosts the award-winning “Application Security Podcast,” “The Security Table,” and “The Threat Modeling Podcast” and is a highly rated industry speaker and trainer, featured at the RSA Conference, the AppSec Village @ DefCon, OWASP Global AppSec, ISC2 Security Congress, InfoSec World and All Day DevOps. Chris founded Security Journey, a security education company, leading to an exit in 2022. Chris was the Chief Security Advocate at Cisco, spreading security knowledge through education and champion programs. Chris has twenty-six years of security experience, holding positions across the gamut, including application security, security engineering, incident response, and various Executive roles. Chris holds the CISSP and CSSLP certifications.

jim

Jim Manico

Founder of Manicode Security

Jim Manico is the founder of Manicode Security, where he trains software developers on secure coding and security engineering. Jim is also the founder of Brakeman Security, Inc. and an investor/advisor for Signal Sciences. He is the author of Iron-Clad Java: Building Secure Web Applications (McGraw-Hill), a frequent speaker on secure software practices, and a member of the JavaOne Rockstar speaker community. Jim is also a volunteer for and former board member of the OWASP foundation.

Join our Mailing list!

Get all the latest news, exclusive deals, and feature updates.

The IKIGAI concept
Protected By
Shield Security PRO