About Dana
Dana joined CloudSec Operator after a decade running cloud-security operations at a Fortune 500 retailer. She obsesses over the gap between detection and actual fix.
Dana runs the CloudSec Operator newsroom around one question: what happens to a cloud finding after somebody writes the ticket. She edits every comparison the publication runs and keeps the source ledger honest.
Twelve years across cloud security operations and platform engineering, most of it spent on the side of the org that has to make the change in production rather than the side that files the finding.
Latest by Dana Mercer
Where the weeks disappear: The anatomy of a 150-day cloud remediation cycle
Cloud security leads often face a 100-day MTTR for critical findings despite having top-tier detection. Here is how ownership gaps and production fear stall the remediation lifecycle.
Detection got 10x faster. Your fix rate did not move
Detection tools now generate alerts faster than engineering teams can close them, creating a permanent backlog of security debt.
10,000 open Wiz findings: the triage order that clears them
A backlog of 10,000 cloud security findings represents 5,000 hours of manual work. Here is how small teams can move from reactive triage to a closed-loop remediation model.
The fix takes 20 minutes. The change ticket takes 11 days
The technical solution to a cloud misconfiguration is often a single line of code, yet critical risks frequently persist for over 90 days due to operational friction.
A 12-month backlog will not clear by severity. Try this order instead
A cloud security backlog older than 12 months is a data integrity problem, not just a list of risks. Clearing it requires a shift from severity scores to reachability analysis and managed closure.
How to fix Wiz findings without taking production down
Fixing a high-risk Wiz finding in production requires a structured approach to identifying owners, analyzing blast radius, and synchronizing changes with Infrastructure as Code.
Stale tags push your exposure window to 9 months. Nobody notices
Nine month exposure windows for vulnerabilities are persisting because security teams cannot identify the functional owners of assets or verify if fixes will break production.
How to clear a five-figure cloud backlog in 90 days, week by week
Inheriting a cloud security program often means managing a debt of 10,000 or more findings. This 90-day framework moves beyond detection to establish a functional remediation pipeline.
Your CNAPP found the hole. Somebody still has to dig
Fixing the 20% of cloud security risks that break production requires more than a 'fix' button.
The 5 Kubernetes misconfigurations worth fixing this quarter
Kubernetes security failure is rarely a detection problem. Focus your remediation capacity on these five misconfigurations to reduce the attack surface without breaking production.