Cloud Data Security:
Why its future is programmable?

When a company or individual purchase software, it usually goes like this: a senior official calls the IT people and the security crew to tell them they’ll purchase new software for whatever reason. As the IT team needs to customize, integrate and regulate it in the company’s system, whether it is on premise or in cloud, the IT crew has to arrange it and the security crew needs to do their job, too.

What’s the problem with this approach? That all the IT crew, including security and compliance are lagging behind. They have to acquire an extra pack of products to have enough control over who accesses the data and to create levels of access. On the other hand, you have an ever-growing group of rules and regulations that say that security and privacy have to be ingrained by design; but the software the company purchased was not created by the IT team so they don’t design a security system, everything they do is additional.

The heroes of data security: the defenders

This is what is called a “defender”, the people in charge of ingraining security and privacy into the software as an afterthought. This process is profoundly complex because security software needs to be customized to work swiftly with the app whose data they secure. The larger the data is, the more complex the process the defender has to follow to configure the products that keep it safe.

Clearly, this process is not 100 % safe. There are many weaknesses because there are many seams between the system or the app and the security products that protect it. They don’t come from the same place and are continually evolving, so there are gaps in communication and direction.

What can developers do?

This has led to a change of perspective from developers. More requirements migrate into the development process by day. Security hasn’t been left behind: some developers have taken part of the security process to reduce the seams between the security software and the app or system.

How do they achieve this? The first step usually is reducing coding vulnerabilities. This is key considering that they are what generally lead to security patches, which means that the system has to be taken down for maintenance, something that’s not good for business.

But coding security hasn’t been all. Some developers use tools that can be embedded into apps to secure them and control huge data flows. The main difference between this and what the defenders do is that it is not an afterthought, they are ingrained into the app, which means both the app and its security are on the same page, the app’s features are brought together with its security.

Supervising, ruling, and protecting data and its access have another vital aspect: app convenience.

All kinds of companies are looking for ways to get in the wave of the flexibility cloud infrastructure allows. What are their main concerns? Using infrastructure that doesn’t directly allow them to control safety and compliance.

But when development engrains data control tools, defenders can determine the best infrastructure to use for the app depending on what they want to focus on: cost, confidence, performance or anything else.

So… In conclusion?

Programmable data safety helps businesses to optimize their digital footprint, and save tons of money and time in security products and their integration.

Integrating data security tools into apps and systems provides what companies most need on data security: to control and be able to design their security, compliance, and privacy protocols and system.