Faces of SteelCloud: Automating the Automators
There’s an old saying, “the cobbler’s children have no shoes.” That’s because dad is too busy to make them. You also might see that happen in business, where businesses don’t take their own medicine. But Luke Wilson will have none of that at SteelCloud. He creates the internal apps and automations that streamline internal processes and, in turn, make ConfigOS better.
We recently sat down with Luke to discuss his complex internal development work, his external technical consulting and, of course, crochet. Read along to see what he said.
What do you do as a developer at SteelCloud?
I wear a few hats. But I primarily develop internal tools around technical content authorship and turning DISA STIGs into actionable code for ConfigOS automated compliance. I also do some enterprise consulting work for customers and some implementation troubleshooting.
Are you working on anything exciting right now?
Yes. I am working on an automation solution for internal use in our signature authorship processes. When DISA releases STIGs and STIG updates, we change those signatures into code for use with ConfigOS so that the customer does the least amount of compliance work possible. It is a very high touch and high time process that is at the crux of compliance automation—to streamline effort and deliver updates to customers even faster.
Why do you love doing this kind of work?
The complexity and nature of compliance make it very rewarding for me. It’s a monumental task. And given the complexity, our new customers have always either taken the manual approach to compliance or used a scanning tool that doesn’t remediate like ConfigOS does. While the tried and tested manual way may be cumbersome, it’s also familiar and habitual and there is resistance to change. So that “aha” moment when people see there is a better, happier, more effective approach is electrifying. I have been in the room with clients who have struggled to achieve 30%-50% compliance on a Red Hat Enterprise Linux system using manual configuration. Then we come in and in a couple hours their compliance soars to 80%. They saw demos online, but they had never seen ConfigOS working on their system. Once they picked their jaws up off the ground, they realized the reward is too great than to continue with the traditional, habitual way.
Why do you love working at SteelCloud?
The team is great. It’s nice here. I’ve worked for scrappy startups, flying by the seat of our pants. SteelCloud is the leader at what we do. We have access to a lot of resources and internal knowledge of how to do things right. We have been doing it the longest and the best, so people here really know how to get things done. And they are great folks, too. It doesn’t get better than this.
What kind of impact do you think SteelCloud is having on the industry?
There are scanning tools. And there are tools that can remediate a limited number of STIGs. As far as I know, however, SteelCloud has developed the only tool that scans, remediates and reports on all of the DISA STIGs and CIS Benchmarks. With ConfigOS MPO, we also provide hands-free continuous compliance capabilities. Nobody else does that. Within minutes of every DISA release, we’re starting the authoring process. We are on the front line, providing scan and remediation content that is one to one with DISA STIGs more accurately and quickly than anyone else.
The incentive to automate compliance is massive. But the industry has only one full solution—ConfigOS. We don’t exactly know what every organization has developed internally. But if history is any indication of how things go in the software world, it will be years before anyone has a solution that is as fine-tuned, proven and successful in DoD adjacent environments. We are pretty far ahead of the curve. And a lot of that comes down to the people here at SteelCloud. As the leader and principal disrupter in the industry, we attract the cream of the crop.
So I’m particularly impressed with something on your resume. You speak Chinese?
Yes! I minored in Chinese in college and then lived in China for almost a year. I was always into languages. I had a Korean friend in middle-school, so I learned some Korean. Then I learned Esperanto in high school. Then Chinese in college. So now I speak and read Mandarin as well as Esperanto, business-conversational Japanese, a bit of Korean and, more recently, Cantonese. While in DongGuan, China, prior to COVID, I met my wife, who is a Chinese businesswoman. We married earlier this year. Between the pandemic and the spousal visa process, she isn’t in the US yet, but will be soon.
When Luke isn’t automating SteelCloud processes or FaceTiming with his wife, you can find him crocheting holiday gifts, like the snowman you see here. And, of course, he continues to study languages. It scratches a part of his brain that nothing else does. Luke feels that a lot of nuance gets lost in translation and having a deeper understanding of languages is a key to stronger relationships between countries. In that spirit, for this final Faces of SteelCloud post of the year, Luke wishes you all 圣诞快乐 shèng dàn kuài lè! (Happy Holidays!)
Solving Your GPO STIG Compliance Pains
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