At the time, he was breaking new ground, repeating those words to help convince his teams on how crucial developers were going to be to the success of their platform.
While the focus may have been initially on enterprise B2B platforms with Microsoft, and then B2C with the Apple App Store, platforms have become much more ubiquitous and broad in their scope.
Vertical platforms in industries such as hospitality, construction and ecommerce; horizontal platforms in areas such as financial services and CRM; and even platforms for platforms.
In turn, developers enable these platforms to offer a broad array of complementary services, increase average revenue per user and drive more customer retention.
This shift means more opportunities for platforms and developers alike, especially as new markets open up.
Developers are recognizing this too: a recent survey published by small business cloud-accounting platform, Xero, shows more than half said data privacy and security are top of mind, and that 15% reported having faced cybersecurity challenges in the 12 months prior.
These policies set the expectation of how the platforms will operate internally and externally, and by extension any third-parties that they connect with - including developers.
Developers seeking to build solutions that help businesses run their operations and handle their financial information can leverage the scalable and secure environments that platforms provide.
Whether it be a platform policy decision to migrate an ecosystem from OAuth 1.0 to OAuth 2.0, or increasing regulatory requirements for multi-factor authentication, the increased compliance workload pulls valuable time away from building a product.
Increasingly, platforms have recognized this burden and are investing in building out-of-the-box tools required to reduce the load. Underpinning this is extensive documentation, education and support for developers who need help or are interested in taking a deeper dive.
Developers can leverage existing customer details within the security of the platform as part of their onboarding and login flow.
Point-of-sale and payments platforms like Square, Stripe and Shopify all offer secure and easily integrated checkout and payments solutions so developers don't need to build their own.
Issues or unusual behavior, such as sudden spikes in request volumes or webhooks errors, can be immediately flagged for investigation, enabling the platforms to move quickly in response and notify developers.
Reducing burden and barriers to entry for developers encourages innovation and experimentation in a platform.
With developers being supported by cybersecurity features at the platform level, their time is freed up to focus on doing what they do best - solving problems and innovating.
Developers and end-users both benefit from the work that cloud platforms do in cybersecurity.
By prioritizing identifying and working with platforms that provide a secure environment, developers are prioritizing the safety of the data of both parties.
The digitalization of this sector presents a major opportunity for platforms and developers to provide solutions that help small businesses thrive in a secure way.
Taking advantage of the security investment, resources and scale of platforms, like Xero, means that as this digital transition occurs, developers can focus on creating the apps and integrations that make it as smooth as possible.
To deliver on this requires constant effort from all parties, including developers, cybersecurity and IT professionals, end-users, and the platforms they use.
This Cyber News was published on www.cyberdefensemagazine.com. Publication date: Sun, 28 Jan 2024 12:28:06 +0000