Developing enterprise apps quickly is essential for business success, and securing data during the development process is imperative too. Jedidiah Yueh, the Founder and CEO of Delphix, suggests that though not as many people are talking about securing data in the app development process, they should be. Even more so, he argues they must secure this data or face huge consequences.

Main Takeaways

• Something People Need to Talk About: Talking about data security is all the rage. But according to Yueh, securing development data is not discussed as much. Yueh contends that this lack of attention creates security vulnerabilities that bad actors can exploit. He believes that automated platforms built on zero trust principles can mitigate such risks.
• Out With the Old in With the New: The old way of testing apps in development involved a group of people all helping to gather production data and then copy that to the development territory. Of course, with so many hands in the process, the data was not very secure. Now, a platform, like Delphix, can make that process automatic; therefore, more secure. 
• Setting Loftier IT Goals: Yueh argues that IT leaders are not setting high enough goals in terms of developing products quickly enough. In a conversation about his book, “Disrupt or Die,” he explains that the rate of acceleration is much faster than the typical business cycle so leaders must adapt the pace of their goals accordingly.

For a more in-depth look at this episode, check out the article below.

Article Notes

Developing enterprise apps quickly is essential for business success, and securing data during the development process is imperative too. Jedidiah Yueh, the Founder and CEO of Delphix, suggested that though not as many people are talking about securing data in the app development process, they should be. Even more so, he argued they must secure this data or face huge consequences. 

“Nobody wants to talk about test and development data, but development data is a huge honeypot,” Yueh said. “So many people have their fingers in the pot and all of them are potential points of risk. If you think about these nation-states and these ransomware gangs, all they have to do is compromise one individual in an organization with access to development data, and they can cost the company hundreds of millions of dollars to billions of dollars. It’s really not that hard to compromise the people, which is why you have to move to this zero trust model where you use fully automated platforms that use zero trust methods of authentication. So, password less authentication where you have this immutable data record that really protects the data from getting destroyed or encrypted. You really need these safeguards in order to protect data properly today.”

On a recent episode of IT Visionaries, Yueh explained how development data can be properly and speedily secured. He also chatted about his book, “Disrupt or Die: What the World Needs to Learn from Silicon Valley to Survive the Digital Era,” and how IT leaders must set faster and bolder goals for innovation to keep up with the acceleration that is happening all over the world.

Yueh began by explaining his company, Delphix, in straightforward terms.

“Delphix is a data company,” Yueh said. “So we have a DevOps data platform. And what that means is companies today are all run on applications [and] use a ton of applications on your phone. Every time somebody has to release a new version of [an] application, you need to test that application with data that allows you to conduct the tests. And so we’re a DevOps data platform that pulls the data from enterprise apps [and] pushes it into development environments so that the world can release applications better and faster and more securely.” 

According to Yueh, the old way of testing apps in development led to a lot of inefficiency and insecurity.

“The old way of setting up a test and development environment is you have a bunch of admins who touch the production system and set up the development systems,” Yueh said. “And then they work together to pull data from your production application, the live running app. And then you have that data copied and moved into the development environment. And everybody who’s touching that data, it takes more and more time to get the data from A to B, and they’re all points of risk for data loss. Everybody has access to the data during this period. So it’s very insecure or it’s very unsecure. And so what we’re able to do is we automate that entire process. So, we can drop the data in exactly in the development environment; exactly when you need it, and we make all that data secure.” 

It appears Delphix is built to empower Yueh’s approach to innovation that he has also written about in his book, “Disrupt or Die.” He believes that IT leaders must set much loftier and faster goals for developing new products. His company’s platform makes that possible.

“I think the biggest problem is you have a lot [of] IT leaders and technology leaders who try to be pragmatic and say, ‘Hey, we’re at annual releases, let’s move to monthly next,’” said Yueh. “…If you set a goal like that, that’s too conservative, you’re building all of your architecture systems, planning, processes, [and] people around a rate of innovation that is just too slow. And so they really need to just jump to what is modern.” 

To hear more about how Delphix is securing the app testing and development process and helping companies move faster and safer, check out the full episode of IT Visionaries! 

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