* Why working with your apps development colleagues can help your organization
How well do you get on with your applications development folks? Or perhaps I should ask, how much dealing do you have with them? It appears that you need to cozy up to your developer coworkers much more now as applications security issues and Cisco’s recently announced Application Oriented Network are forcing you and your colleagues at the other end of the hall to work more closely.
As you may know, Cisco last month announced its AON strategy, which a story http://www.networkworld.com/news/2005/062705-cisco.html?rl by my Network World colleague Phil Hochmuth explains is designed to optimize Cisco networks to run Web services. It aims to address the issue of application integration by embedding message brokers, such as IBM’s WebSphere Business Integration Message Broker into AON.
In last week’s Network World Wide Area Networking newsletter, authors Steve Taylor and Jim Metzler question how well a company’s app developers will react to using a message broker provided by the networking team. “Would they applaud the move or would they resist and suggest that the networking organization focus on traditional networking functionality and let them provide application functionality?” Steve and Jim would like to hear your views on this, so read their newsletter first http://www.networkworld.com/newsletters/frame/2005/0718wan2.html?rl and then drop them a line.
The need to include security in applications is also bringing networking and developers together, whether they like it or not. John M. Jack, CEO at Fortify Software, a provider of software to automate security processes for software development, cites a Gartner report that states that 70% of exploits occur at the software layer. Therefore, developers must build security into their code and network execs must work with them to educate their colleagues about the myriad security issues that the enterprise face.
Jack believes that a company’s security exec could play a key role in getting the two camps talking. “Security people are the perfect ambassadors,” he says, as they have expertise in networking and development and can interpret and translate the security needs between the two teams.
History has shown us what can go wrong if the two camps don’t talk and learn from each other: developers build code with little understanding of how it will run on the production network and end users blame the network if the application ends up running like a dog. And now, it appears that security and networking execs can deploy all the firewalls they want around the perimeter, but all it takes is for a malicious hacker to exploit a vulnerability in the software and the entire network is in jeopardy.
So how are you working with your applications development colleagues?
