Software development is an irreversible trend. Companies can benefit a lot from working with an offshore development company. Contracting with an overseas development company allows your business to minimize money while leveraging top-notch talent, but it comes with risk.
Before you embark on a partnership with an offshore development company, you need to take security risks into account. Because security risks are what you need to think about from day one. In addition, you must set up a safeguard plan to ensure information confidentiality.
Trade secrets, sensitive customer data, and valuable IP all pass through the hands of your provider as they need to understand the entire system and tackle projects. These resources bring about income and values for your companies. Therefore, essential precautions will prevent that data from falling prey to people out there. If they succeed in doing that, they can threaten your entire business.
It is crucial to shed light on these risks and find relevant solutions. So, in this article, we’ll go through all the security risks of offshore development services.
A brief introduction to offshore development
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Offshore development means making a partial shift of your business processes and operations to a faraway country instead of doing it locally. Typically, a company builds a partnership with a foreign company or agency that provides services like web development, web app development, mobile app development, etc.
Many entrepreneurs gained success and benefit from lower costs when hiring offshore developers. If you want to obtain something when offshoring your business, you need to pick the right offshore development company. Russia, Belarus, Colombia, Uruguay, the Philippines, and Vietnam are well-known countries with the best offshore development companies.
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On the other hand, an offshore development company can offer full-service products and services for diverse clients. The analysts at the host company usually complete the system requirements and specifications. Later, they will be shifted to developers at the offshore development company. Offshore developers will code and develop IT-related works. Besides, the link to supply essential resources to an ODC (Offshore Development Center) can cause severe vulnerabilities for the clients’ system. Trojans and viruses are detrimental risks that can tear down your business. Hackers who create direct damage to the ODC defenses may intrude on the entire system. These clients beg the question of how security risks can be fully recognized and solved.
In the past, we usually ignore the security risks. Companies that work with an offshore development company rarely examinates the security risks. These days, many companies are struggling to establish data leakage precautions within their companies.
Moreover, the most significant advantage of offshoring is the reduction of cost. Companies can make full use of lower living standards in a team-based country to save cost and time. However, you will have to invest a lot of money to improve security. Some companies venture to take risks to have a cost advantage despite the increase of potential risks. But it is not a wise step to take.
If you want to read more about the pros and cons of offshore development services, you can read this blog: https://bsscommerce.com/blog/pros-and-cons-of-offshore-development-services/
All potential risks from a partnership with an offshore development company and relevant solutions
When it comes to offshore safety management, all companies must estimate all potential risks they face. Companies ought to take notice of viruses, service attacks, network intrusions, fraud, and sabotage. To be honest, you can not eliminate all possible threats, but you can minimize their adverse effects on your business.
Moreover, companies should analyze all potential pitfalls and establish computer and network security defenses. It is hard to find solutions to severe consequences, so you need to be alert whether something questionable comes up. Now, we will dive deep into complex security risks when working with an offshore development company below.
Loss of control
When working with an offshore development company, it can not fully control how its software is developed by offshore developers. It has to build a link with the offshore development company. In that way, offshore developers can directly access the client system. The company’s personnel lose the ability to regulate the authentication of users at the ODC. Business owners assign their software development tasks to offshore developers. They don’t have control over the development process of the software.
When the project ends, you will have to spend a considerable amount of money to test software applications. However, virus scanners can only identify and sanitize common viruses. As a result, codes specifically designed to sabotage will pass the defenses and provide particular information to hackers. Security departments will have to make a great effort to guard the entire business against such real risks.
Moreover, while some offshore teams provide real-time application support, other offshore development companies log on to the host system during night shifts and use test environments to code and test programs. These programmers have the authorization to change data files and system libraries needed to maintain the applications they handle. That’s why a client company can lose control over the authentication of users logging in from the ODC.
Moreover, software developers have user ids with broad authority. However, the client company has no control over the security of the ODC. Companies have no idea about whether their offshore developers are sharing passwords or not.
Network complexity
In workplaces, employ that’s to limit the independent thought, creativity, and soft skills of employees. When you work with an offshore development company, these are legitimate issues that you need to address early on. Configuration management is a challenge within a single company’s network. Linking the host computer with an offshore development company outside increases the complexity and risks of the task. An ODC link can mean an unknown network is directly linked into the crucial part of the client company network.
Active precautions can minimize the adverse impact of an ODC link. Communications between the host company and the offshore development company need to be carried out through firewalls. If so, companies can easily monitor the specialized traffic involved in the project and prevent dangerous threats. However, offshore projects are not commonly used it. Instead, offshore developers function as remote employees. They have the same access as official developers who work onsite. The necessary defense against unauthorized intrusion is authentication based on passwords and authorization rules.
Because offshore developers are granted authority to update system libraries, password authorization may be appropriate within the corporate network. Besides, network security services can help monitor activities such as Internet connections to prevent risks. Defensive measures can tack identified vulnerabilities. For example, an offshore developer is doing his job like coding. At that time, he can also chat on a website that would be off-limits to an official programmer who works onsite. A cyber attacker can utilize the open HTTP connection to the workstation and implant a Trojan in the host system or understand the corporate network. The effective alternative solution is that a rogue developer could implant malicious code into a program that works perfectly.
Security policies and procedures
Security policies are regarded as living documents. Companies ought to continuously update and change security policies to keep updated with novel technologies, vulnerabilities, and security requirements. Especially, a company that goes offshoring need to pay attention to security policies to ensure offshore safety management. A company’s security policy needs to contain an acceptable use policy that determines whether it allows someone to access the company’s assets or not. These policies guide its employees on how to protect the company’s data or trade secrets. They also include strategies of how security measurements will be implemented and a procedure that evaluate the effectiveness of those measures.
Even if the offcompany’selopment company has an effective security policy, how strictly it is impcompany’sis a big deal. That’s why security reviews should be acknowledged because that is the only valid way to answer this question. We should only launch the security review after a thorough examination of the security policies. All procedures should also be analyzed to implement the most effective policy. What’s more, it should estimate how well the policy and procedures are adopted.
An indeThat’st security analyst should take the duty of conducting the review, not the vendor sales team. The investigation to do a security review should dive deep into how the security department has solved known vulnerabilities. In addition, the client company must involve its network securWhat’srsonnel in all technical decisions.
Threats to a company’s intellectual property
Intellectual property is the practical expression of the ideas that drive growth and competition in the marketplace. In fact, intellectual property makes valuable contributions to all levels of your business. In addition, intellectual property consists of business plans to trademarks, patents, and copyright that make your business unique compared to your competitors. That’s why companies need to prevent security risks that may harm intellectual property.
The protection of the intellectual property is primarily assigned to a company’s legal department. It is assumed that trade secrets may be damaged, which is most likely to occur due to digital media. With a view to protecting intellectual property, the very first step is to identify primary data files, and access must be restricted. Next, the methods used to remove information from either the host site or the offshore development facility must analyze.
It is essential for a company to analyze all the risks that relationships with offshore companies may cause to its intellectual property. The risks depend on the software application under development, the relationship with the offshore vendor, and the company’s intellectual property as well.
Your competitors can quickly utilize certain trade secrets and probably tear down your business. Such information is in need of protection. Software development projects that involve easily replicable trade secrets should take the strictest security measures. In fact, we should not offshore such projects at all. Because intellectual property is not as easily stolen. We can not eliminate all potential risks that can do harm to intellectual property.
Legal issues
Moreover, during software development projects for fraudulent purposes often expose customer data and financial information. The employees of an offshore development company are not subject to the country’s laws where the host company is based. However, cybercriminals lack the technical and legal framework to investigate and prosecute system break-ins or data theft.
The incidence of international Internet credit card fraud is rising dramatically. Thanks to the Internet, the world has turned into a global village. Therefore, information on the finances of large corporations can be used for insider trading and manipulation of stock prices. Some countries which are aware of cybercrime have already taken a few measures. However, their effects are not massive and make only small positive changes.
Because security jurisdictions vary throughout countries, security departments need to understand local laws. Something wrong may occur, so companies need to set up a full safeguard plan to prevent annoying problems later. Precautions have to be acknowledged, and security pitfalls solving responsibilities have to be mentioned in contracts’ terms before any projects are deployed.
BSS Commerce – why you can trust us?
Choosing the right offshore development company plays a crucial role in the business path of all companies. That partnership can bring about a wide range of benefits for the holding company. Massive potential security risks can be greatly eliminated thanks to a wholehearted and dedicated offshore development company. If an offshore development company adopts great offshore safety management, all trade secrets and customer data are under protection to keep your business safe from competitors.
BSS Commerce is confident in meeting clients’ needs and goals to handle any projects of any complexity. Our certified team has obtained over 500 successful projects for about 21,000 worldwide clients through nine years of experience. We provide high-quality offshore development services with cost-efficient and talent-rich solutions. We really pay attention to offshore safety management and continually innovate clients’ security risks.
Our extensive and dedicated development team is ready to support at any time your eCommerce development needs. If you want to learn more about the offshore development center from BSS Commerce, you can check out at https://bsscommerce.com/offshore-development-center.html
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