If the Shoe Fits: Ignore Security — Forget Funding
by Miki SaxonA Friday series exploring Startups and the people who make them go. Read all If the Shoe Fits posts here
If you’ve been around long enough you find déjà vu connections everywhere.
I had a strong sense of it reading that security has become a priority with VCs.
According to The Information, computer security companies are being brought on to advise other companies about startups they are thinking of acquiring, and VCs are including cybersecurity experts as part of their due diligence when they look to invest in companies.
Security has been an after thought, if that; a feature that the company would get to as soon as [whatever] happened.
The déjà vu hit because that is the same attitude companies had towards quality once-upon-a-time (some still do).
After conception, architecture, design and manufacturing were done the product was sent to QC (quality control) and back up the line if there were problems.
In many cases the quality flaws were actually designed into the product or the manufacturing process itself, which made fixing them very expensive or impossible.
The same problem happens when security is the afterthought.
Any fool knows that if the wrong grade of steel is specified for a bridge or the spec is changed to facilitate speed or budgetary concerns the bridge is likely to fail sooner rather than later.
Zukerberg’s oft repeated “move fast and break it” is proving to be a deal breaker in a more ways than one.
Image credit: HikingArtist
July 30th, 2015 at 1:15 am
[…] products to become part of the Internet of Things (IoT) and a few weeks ago I cited an article that raising money in that arena was tied to building security into a product from the […]