Why Can't the World's Most Innovative Organizations Secure Their Data?

Facebook, Under Armour, Orbitz, Panera Bread, Saks, and now Google – the world’s largest, and most innovative organizations are dealing with the implications of massive data breaches. Bruised reputations, fines, law suits. Not even including Google’s most recently shared incident, the number of compromised records in 2018 has already eclipsed the 2017 number, according to Identity Theft Resource Center.

 What is going on?

Concern over data security is top of mind for Blueprint customers – we work with the world’s largest organizations, primarily in highly regulated industries. And those concerns are juxtaposed against a similarly critical corporate-wide mandate for digital transformation.

Needless to say – these too often opposing (and silo’ed) forces are in conflict.

On the one hand - organizations understand that customer expectations have changed as a result of the Uber’s, the Airbnb’s, the Amazon’s of the world. People want to have ground-breaking, life-changing technology available to them in all aspects of their lives – on demand. 

And as a result of these fast-changing expectations, even the most established organizations recognize that to stay relevant, to preserve market-share, they need to bring innovative and even disruptive technology to market – swiftly. This is why companies turn to Agile – to drive speed in software development.

On the other hand, in an effort to mitigate the very risks that innovation brings to the market, regulations have been imposed. And in industries where regulations are particularly daunting, companies have struggled to keep pace with customer expectations and drive meaningful innovation.

So, as a result of this conflict, the companies that are driving the greatest innovation tend to be the ones with the most exposure. They are going fast. They are disrupting markets. And they are overlooking the regulatory and security requirements that exist to mitigate risk - because addressing them takes time and costs money.

How can companies better align the imperative to innovate with the need for compliance and security?

For one thing – they need to be honest about the limitations of Agile development. At scale, Agile can be a precarious proposition. It can impose considerable risk to the organization. Regulatory and security requirements are disposed of with each sprint, making it impossible to manage change or provide a reliable audit trail. And software development happens too often in a way that is silo'ed from business and compliance stakeholders, so those interests are misunderstood, or overlooked altogether.

At Blueprint, we recommend a regulated Agile approach - an iterative process that automates workflow and seamlessly sources and captures regulatory and security requirements right out of the gate – in a manner that is persistent, collaborative and scalable.

The spotlight on Google, Facebook and the like will only heighten the urgency around this matter. The stakes are simply too high nowadays for companies to continue flying by the seat of their pants. To learn how Blueprint customers are realizing the benefits of regulated Agile – check out this infographic and share your comments below.