Prevail Uzodinma
Prevail is a master’s student and DevOps practitioner with a background in software engineering and cloud deployments. She has hands-on experience building and managing CI/CD pipelines for web applications, including leading the deployment of ExpensePal, a full-featured student expense tracker. Passionate about bridging development and security, she focuses on sharing practical, beginner-friendly lessons that help newcomers see how security can be integrated into real-world DevOps workflows.
Session
As part of my master’s program, I managed the deployment and DevOps pipeline for a student project, ExpensePal, a web-based expense tracker. Early on, security wasn't our focus. We were excited about automating builds with Jenkins, deploying to AWS, and seeing pipelines pass. But a small misconfiguration nearly exposed sensitive information, turning security from an afterthought into a critical concern.
In this rookie-level talk, I will share what this experience taught me about integrating security into DevOps workflows. I’ll cover mistakes we made, guidance from mentors, and small but powerful practices; peer reviews, secrets scanning, and IAM hygiene, that improved our deployment process.
This talk is aimed at beginners in DevOps and cloud environments. Attendees will learn that security isn’t an afterthought; it’s a mindset. Even newcomers can make a meaningful impact by embedding security into deployment practices from the start.