Recently, many organizations that struggled to deliver strong protection under the pressure of the app economy, decided to compromise on security to get apps released faster. This would be a great risk to both companies and their customers or app users. Since the app economy is bringing new cyber security challenges, companies should increase the complexity of their security practice to better protect customer’s information against attacks, instead of cutting corners. Customers also expect rapid and secure experiences. If they think that app is not secure, they would switch to an alternative app immediately. One way the article mentioned to respond to the new challenges of app economy is identity-centric security. The identity-centric approach uses behavioral analytics and predictive strategies to verify identities and mange identity-related activities without sacrificing the customer experience. In addition, the security team must work together with app development team in every phase of the development process to ensure security is integrated into the app.
Security is usually the greatest concern on e-commerce and e-banking. Even though the company is under intense pressure due to fierce competition in the market and the rising demand of customers. It is obviously not a wise decision to compromise on security for faster release. This compromise will cause serious risks to the company. The app will be vulnerable to hacking or malicious attacks, and hackers may steal customers’ information or credentials for financial purpose or illegal use. Therefore, the company may involve into litigations. Their reputation may be damaged and customers will switch to other apps since there are so many similar apps available in the market. The risk of loss outweighs the benefit of faster release.
Ahmed A. Alkaysi says
Interesting article Mengqi. Companies should do the contrary, making sure their apps are secured before releasing it to the public It doesn’t matter how fast an app is release, if it has security flaws than it will be a terrible product and customers will not use it. Better to be slow and secured, than fast and flawed. As security is now a hot topic, hopefully companies will take their times and build secure apps.
Mauchel Barthelemy says
Compromising security for faster release is definitely not they way to go for obvious reasons Ahmed highlighted above. Ahmed is 100% correct when he mentions that risks of loss outweigh the benefits of faster release. It all may sound no big deal at the beginning, but this is a catastrophe crisis in the making when many prominent financial institutions engage in such bad practice. Hackers will eventually find out about those vulnerabilities and create a common practice to take advantage of them at one. This is what will transform the outcome into this a big crisis. By the time companies that compromise security realize it, this will become difficult to recover from losing a lot of money, consumers’ money and PFIs.