Code-low, security-high: low-code as a cyberhero

Digital threats are increasing and cyber attacks are becoming more sophisticated. That's why you can't innovate without paying attention to cybersecurity in your development process. After all, a security breach can lead to data theft, resulting in financial losses and reputational damage. In this blog, Lucas Pijnacker Hordijk, Business Technology Consultant at Quatronic, explains how OutSystems' low-code platform can help you.

The growing role of cybersecurity

Cybersecurity plays an extremely important role in application development. That can be quite a brain teaser for developers. The advantage of OutSystems' low-code platform is that the platform itself already takes a large part of the security measures off your hands. Here I am mainly talking about protecting the infrastructure and providing secure communication between client and server. Of course, the OutSystems team does this not only for us, but for an impressive number of organizations, so they need to make sure it's put together properly. OutSystems is therefore not just a player in the market; it is a globally recognized leader in high-performance application development. In 2023, Gartner recognized OutSystems as a leader in the Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Low-Code Application Platforms. And in the G2 Summer 2024 Enterprise Grid™ Reports OutSystems is recognized as a leader in three categories: Low-Code Development Platforms, Rapid Application Development, and Mobile Development Platforms.

Developer responsibility

The platform offers the tools, but it's up to us as developers to use them safely. The fact that OutSystems takes care of many security issues does not mean that we no longer have responsibility for information security when developing an application. You have to think carefully about who has access to which data and who can modify this data. If just anyone has access to all the data, then of course you're screwed. This means that you must very carefully monitor the logic of processing data and carefully assign roles and rights.

In practice

Take an order management system, for example: you have a person who can place orders and, of course, this person must be able to see their own orders. In addition, you have a back office team. These people can view all orders, but are not allowed to access the personal information of the person who placed the order. You give all that information neatly a place in the application that you are building. By assigning the right roles to the right people, you can ensure that the right person has access to the right data. We define a role as programmers. But the implementation of the roles themselves has already been arranged in OutSystems. With high-code, you do the implementation yourself, which is error-prone. OutSystems takes care of just that kind of risk.

The importance of thorough design

Pendant our design sprint we understand an organization and its processes. We extensively discuss the various roles and also pay a lot of attention to the data model. We classify the data: what is public data, what information is for internal purposes only, and is there personal data? Based on this, we come up with a strategy for implementation.

Certifications and Best Practices

OutSystems is ISO-certified and complies with many other certifications that ensure the safety and standardization of the platform. They offer an extensive library of ready-to-use components that are built according to best practices and are constantly updated to comply with the latest safety guidelines (OWASP) and to meet scalability. At Quatronic, we are also working on ISO certification, which is particularly important for organizations in the medical, financial and infrastructure sectors.

Want to know more?

Are you curious about how OutSystems' low-code platform can help your organization with cybersecurity? Take contact on to discover how we can create a safe and efficient IT landscape together.

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