Design security as vital as data security

Security by design is an approach to software and hardware development that seeks to make systems as free of vulnerabilities and impervious to attack as possible through such measures as continuous testing, authentication safeguards and adherence to best programming practices. Security by design is rapidly becoming crucial in the rapidly developing emerging technologies especially Internet of Things (IoT) environment, Craig Goodwin, VP and Chief Security Officer, CDK Global, tells Jayarama Emani

What does CDK Global do?
We are an automotive retail technology company. We enable dealerships and also automotive businesses to sell cars, service and other activities. We have full suite of software applications that include everything from front dealerships, websites from where a customer gets a lead on the choice of vehicle all the way into the showrooms, the finances required, the back-office functions of the dealerships and all the way back into the services and spares department.

Can you explain the process please?
It all depends on the kind of dealership that you choose. As such, we have home-grown products and applications for the automotive industry and some applications have been added to our suite through acquisitions.

These products and applications are useful in making critical decisions right from the CFOs office engaged in monthly accounting to sales invoicing to connecting the stores to retail customers online. This process reduces the time to select and purchase by at least 3 hours, thus bringing in much needed comfort in sale and purchase of a new vehicle.

Do you have any clients in India? What does the India office do?
No. We don’t but may be in future. The India office is basically a research & development (R&D) centre for us, developing or evolving products and software applications for our customers. We have a big security presence here. Our security operations centre is based out of India. We have product security, business continuity planning and disaster recovery located here.

What are the basic threats to IT security?
Data security especially, personal data security poses a great threat to IT security, since there are many fraudsters out there who would like to get a chunk or whole of the data pertaining to a customer. In our case, we would like to earn the trust of the customers and the dealers for which data security is of paramount value. Data is money in the black market. So, we build security in to our products from day one.

Security by design is another aspect of IT security. Security by design is an approach to software and hardware development that seeks to make systems as free of vulnerabilities and impervious to attack as possible through such measures as continuous testing, authentication safeguards and adherence to best programming practices.

Security by design is rapidly becoming crucial in the rapidly developing emerging technologies especially Internet of Things (IoT) environment. In every product we build and deliver to the customer, security is in our mind. We ensure security is baked into the quality processes and building processes so that the customer not only gets the best product in the market but a secured one.

Digitisation of the automotive industry also exposes one to many security threats. Through the digital channels people have access to our dealers, their marketing information and other potential trade secrets. That makes us all the more agile as we do security testing these days almost on a day-to-day basis rather than on a weekly or quarterly basis as was the case in the earlier days. Partnering with the development organization has made the job easy for us in this regard.

In how many countries are you operating as of now? What is the market share in various regions?
We are currently offering our services for dealers across 65 countries. Though we do not offer our services in India, the 1,400-odd technical team in India is the back-bone of our offering worldwide. 80 per cent of the group revenue comes from North America and the rest 20 per cent of the revenue comes from the rest of the world.

What immediate trends do you foresee in the IT Security space?
Going forward emerging technologies like automation, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning will augment the benefits emanating out of IT Security. They will help in automating the processes for better output as also cutting the timelines by a huge margin helping us to keep pace with the ever-increasing requirements of the customer.

Maintaining maturity of the processes without deviating much from the basic offerings in the ever-changing digital space will be the greatest challenge for IT Security going forward.