How IT professionals work. Ivan Novikov, CEO of Wallarm

We continue to ask specialists about the mode of work and rest, professional habits, the tools they use, and much more.

It will be interesting to find out what unites them, in what they contradict each other. Perhaps their answers will help to identify some general patterns, useful tips that will help many of us.
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Today our guest is Ivan Novikov, CEO of Wallarm . It cannot be said that his work consists only in the management of the company: he has to take a lot on himself - from research to customer support.

What do you do in the company?

Since we have a startup, I do almost everything - including research. I am responsible for the detection - designing algorithms, which then correspond to C and work quickly. I invent new algorithms for monitoring attacks. Sometimes I play the director, sign a bunch of documents, communicate with clients, looking for partners.

One phrase (phrase) best describes how you work:

Chaotic.

How many hours a day do you spend on work?

An average of 18 hours.

How many hours do you sleep?

I try to sleep on average 6 hours.

Do you have breakfast

As a rule, do not have time to have breakfast.

How long does the road take?

Maximum half an hour.

How do you spend your time on the road?

I think I plan my day. And once I drove 46 hours and thought about a task that I could not solve. I drove by car from New York to Seattle and didn’t sleep. When you drive, the brain should always be focused. I managed to advance well in my thinking.

What issue tracker'om / repository do you use?

Cloud JIRA, Confluence, Git.

What tools, frameworks do you use for development?

For audit tasks and hack tests, use Trac. We have a local consulting part that we cannot give to the cloud, so in this case, JIRA does not suit us.

Do you have any internal projects or libraries in your company and why were they created?

We have products (for example, Scanner), which were originally born as internal projects. Our company had an enterprising employee who offered them. We just tried to optimize our work in this way.

What annoys you most when you work?

First, human laziness: they could have done more, but they were lazy.

Secondly, a stormy useless activity: when a person cannot plan what he will do, he clings to everything and does not understand what.

What professional literature would you recommend?

• Web Application Hacker's Handbook , second edition. This is a big book on a thousand pages. Everything's there.
• The Tangled Web : A Guide to Securing Modern Web Applications, Michael Zalewski.

What do you prefer: electronic reading rooms or paper books?

I do not have electronic readers, I read paper books. Today, just some guy gave me a book. Just went and gave (smiles).

What technology (computers, tablets, smartphones) and operating systems do you prefer at work and at home?

I used Mac OS for five years. This year I switched back to Linux. My employees mostly use Linux, and sometimes Mac OS.

I use the iPhone, and they use the iPhone or Android.

Do you listen to music when you work?

Not at work. And I prefer Yandex.Radio, the “Modern Classics” section.

And when in the office someone turns on the music, is it distracting?

I do not care.

Which life hack allows you to be more efficient?

If you have a button mouse and you're stuck, you can move your fingers by one. Usually, you press the mouse buttons with your index and middle finger, and after the shift you’ll have to make it middle and nameless. And then in the brain some connections change, and you think better.

What applications and services can you do without in your work or in your personal life?

Gmail Inbox. I like their concept: for example, you can put off email there.

What would Ivan Novikov write in a letter to future generations?

I would advise people to take care of their identity, because now much is being replaced by robots, automatics. Therefore, you need to be something authentic, special, different from others.

You have come a long way. And someone is now at the beginning of this path. What would you recommend to a person trying to go the same way?

Previously, we did not have a Bug Bounty and could not send bugs there. We did this either through open source security, or communicated directly with vendors.

Bug Bounty is a program offered by many websites and software developers with which people can be recognized and rewarded for finding bugs, especially those related to exploits and vulnerabilities (Wikipedia).

And now there are these mechanisms. Therefore, I recommend Bug Bounty to everyone, try to find bugs. Moreover, there are reports of people. Read what people do and try to use it in their projects. Besides, they will pay you for it.