Microsoft last week confirmed what many already realized - Microsoft is one of the largest diversified providers of cyber security solutions and services. In making this industry's "hunch" official, Microsoft validated the criticality of a well developed and multifaceted cyber security expertise to the success of an application provider. A provider of end-user solutions can no longer succeed in the market without weaving cyber security consideration into every aspect of an application development life cycle.
Microsoft launches Security Experts services, boosting security spend (cnbc.com)
Gartner identifies Cybersecurity Mesh as the second top 2022 technology trend after Data Fabric. According to Gartner, “Cybersecurity mesh is a flexible, composable architecture that integrates widely distributed and disparate security services”. As cybersecurity focus shifts to protecting data at source, data in transit, and user touch points, the application architecture and design play an increasingly vital role in bringing to life the application frameworks which are cyber robust and easily defendable, can be monitored in real time and adjusted quickly and / or in an automated fashion in response to threats. All this needs to happen without impacting the user interaction with the application. Consequently, developer success will increasingly depend on integrating a robust security expertise in their application development process.
The other side of this predication is also true – no cybersecurity firm will succeed without a thorough and nuanced understanding of data, data fabric, and user experience. Microsoft’s vast trove of user and application knowledge will, undoubtedly, make it a much more informed and sophisticated cybersecurity fighter than many pure cybersecurity players. The knowledge of how a modern application is constructed and brought to life will become an indispensable component of cybersecurity analysis and architecture planning.
And clients? Clients are likely to start requiring that their development partners start demonstrating cyber security knowledge alongside their understanding of client operations. If a proposed application cannot be built as inherently cybersecure, a client might consider looking for a more cybersecurity aware application development partner.