Newsletter #15: Tech Debt Is Like My Messy Garage ?
I was looking at my garage today, and it really reminded me of tech debt. The garage was functional but not efficient. There were things everywhere, and lots of space was unused or not optimized. I neglected and avoided cleaning things up, so when I wanted to, it was overwhelming. Cleaning the garage was time out my day that I didn’t want to spend, but I know it would make future projects easier.
Technical debt increases complexity and is sometimes a blocker towards security. How? Well, for example, say I want to take advantage of a new security/fraud feature that my payment processor offers. But I’m two whole versions behind. Now, I’m limited in implementing this feature. Sure, there can be workarounds, but that’s not the point. This happened before in real life.
The more complex a system is, the more probability of increasing risk to the system goes up. This also includes information security risks. I often want to implement some of my security toolings, but I see a lot of fundamental processes are manual, limiting my ability to deploy tooling efficiently. For example, say you want to add checkov into your Terraform CI/CD pipelines. But, turns out, you don’t even CI/CD setup on any repo!
Anyway, next time you look at your garage or your tech debt, consider picking up a box or converting that instance into a container. Future you might thank you. This is advice to me as well!
Take care,
Ayman
This article was previously posted in the Newsletter.
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