Any initiative to transform the way you build internal and customer-facing applications will encounter a lot of scrutiny and questions before deciding to adopt. One executive’s approval is particularly critical to the success of no-code software adoption.
A Chief Security Officer (CSO)—or Chief Information Security Officer (CISO)—is the highest level executive responsible for the information security of an organization. Their job is to ensure new platforms don’t introduce security risks to the ecosystem. They must continuously vet any enterprise IT platform that’s used within the organization and keep an eye out for any security vulnerabilities that bad actors might be able to exploit.
To help assure CSOs that developing applications using a Codeless Architecture is secure, we’ll break down their main concerns and explain how a no-code platform like Unqork can mitigate them.
Chief concerns of the Chief Security Officer
Increased cybercrime. As cybersecurity threats evolve and become more difficult to manage, CSOs might be hesitant to endorse a relatively new platform. Cybercrime went up 600% over the course of the pandemic, a time where work-from-home allowed phishing emails to become more elaborate and targeted.
Safeguarding mass amounts of private data. Internal cybersecurity and compliance concerns are paramount, especially since enterprises interact with more sensitive information than ever before. If organizations aren’t using software that protects the integrity, confidentiality, and accessibility of user data, CSOs know that their enterprise could wind up paying millions in compliance penalties. HIPAA violations alone can cost up to $1.5 million per violation, per year.
Reigning in shadow IT. Shadow IT refers to any software or applications used without the IT team’s knowledge, which means they can’t adequately regulate or secure it. Without total control over their organization’s IT infrastructure and everything therein, a CSO can’t protect it from unnecessary risk.
3 reasons why CSOs can trust no-code development software
CSOs recognize that investing in innovative technologies is key to driving value and gaining a competitive advantage—as long as those technologies stay ahead of cybersecurity threats. Here’s a shortlist of no-code’s advantages that are most relevant to CSOs.
1. Scale your security & compliance functions
Some people see how intuitive and user-friendly no-code development is and assume that “easy to use” means “easy to hack.” This is one of the biggest myths about no-code. The best no-code platforms have security built-in from the ground up. With Unqork, all enterprise-grade security protocols and decisions have been pre-made for you on the backend.
The composability of the Unqork platform means that you can more easily maintain compliance standards across your organization. Composability allows enterprises to remove, swap, and pair software components at will. These modular components mean that you develop the application once, with the ability to reuse the components across multiple projects, multiple times. This extends beyond building the application to actually monitoring the application—discover a security vulnerability once, and you fix it everywhere.
The platform supports data encryption in-transit and at rest, and you can even bring your own encryption keys. You can securely deploy your application in your own single-tenant infrastructure—your instance, your products, your rules. We partner with AICPA-certified third-party auditors to maintain security compliance with SOC 2 Type II, GDPR, and industry-mandated standards (e.g., HIPAA).
2. Easily maintain auditability
Since the best no-code platforms are built with compliance in mind from the beginning, you’ll be able to build comprehensive audit trails of any interactions and maintain all data versions. With Unqork, it’s easy to see who has changed what and when using easy queries for data changes and audits. You can set parameters on how long data will be stored and when it should be purged. You can also just as easily record and store all submission changes from a record’s creation and create full snapshots in real-time. Not only do these features reduce troublesome instances of editing, overwriting, and renaming, but they also help facilitate complex analysis.
Comprehensive role-based access controls (RBAC) make it easier for CSOs to manage roles and permissions, which in turn helps maintain regulatory compliance. RBAC allows team managers to regulate granular permissions from the field to form level—everyone has access to what they need, and nothing they shouldn’t. Flexible reporting structures within the platform accurately reflect roles within your organization, which means auditors will never have to question who has access to what as you demonstrate compliance.
3. Offer unprecedented control
One of the best things about no-code is that it democratizes enterprise application development. Business users can dive into the platform and contribute directly to projects to bring their ideas to life. As much as we’re proud of this, we understand that no-code might sound like the Wild West of application development to the skeptical CSO. But in reality, no-code gives the CSO much more control over what’s being built and executed within the platform.
No editable codebase means that Unqork Creators are naturally constrained by the platform’s functionality, which inherently limits the amount of risk CSOs take on. This constraint doesn’t limit creativity—it just means that the modular components have been tested before you ever start using them. If we do find errors and need to debug, changes automatically get pushed out to all instances of each component so that you don’t have to worry about lingering vulnerabilities.
No-code also helps enterprises manage shadow IT more responsibly. With no-code, employees are less likely to seek help from external software because they can build the exact custom applications they need, in a fraction of the time.
With no-code development, CSOs get the best of both worlds: A dynamic, collaborative app development platform that drives innovation—without driving them insane with security concerns.
