Waves of disruptive technologies are transforming the business world. It is especially true for enterprises, who have historically had to move much more deliberately. To thrive in this rapidly changing environment, companies must find a way to adapt their business processes and architectures so they can shift course when necessary. It is what analysts call 'business agility.' 

Increasingly, business agility is associated with an emerging trend called citizen development. It's the practice of using business users, technically savvy subject matter experts (SMEs), and people closer to business problems to build automation apps. According to Gartner, as the demand for new apps is outpacing development, over 40% of organizations report suffering from a skills gap in app development. 

Citizen development application platforms lower the skillsets required to design and create new innovative solutions and apps. This rising interest in citizen development ought to be balanced with considerations regarding cyber security and governance of citizen developer apps. 

Two areas need special attention: 

• Cyber Security of Citizen Developer apps 
• Governance of the Citizen Development program 

Growing Concerns in Cybersecurity 

According to Positive Technologies, a leading global provider of information security solutions, one of its recent studies revealed that an external attacker can penetrate 93 percent of companies. It further observed an increase in ransomware activity by 65% in 2022, and attacks on industry grew 53%, while attacks on transport almost doubled. 

The leading causes of these attacks are

• misconfigurations
• human error
• poor maintenance on the part of system administrators and users alike, and unknown assets (which do not conform to previously defined configurations) 

A whopping 44 percent of the executives surveyed said that their growing reliance on partners and suppliers exposes them to significant security risks. Others (30%) cited inadequate budgets as the reason for their lack of cybersecurity preparedness and pointed out that hackers often have more resources. Additionally, 25% of respondents said new technologies pose the most significant security threat. 

Thus, having citizen development programs adds one more avenue to the cyber security threat profile of organizations trying to leverage newer technologies for digital transformation.

Risk Mitigation and Data Governance with Citizen Development 

As the number of citizen developers working on app development initiatives continues to rise, so does the number of vulnerabilities. All new technologies bring some risk of data exposure. That's why it is essential to implement the best practices recommended by IT security experts to reduce those risks and make citizen development a safe, secure way of creating business applications. 

AgilePoint enables teams to implement governance policies and leverage security features in a systematic manner. It is structured into the following: 

• Infrastructure 
• Security 
• Design Time 
• User Interface 
• Deployment 
• Run-time 

There are three layers to ensure the governance of citizen development programs. 

• IT Policies and Procedures 
• Execution and implementation through the citizen development platform 
• Monitoring & optimization 

There are multiple ways to mitigate the risks associated with citizen development. The first is to educate employees on how to use the technology safely, provide them with guidelines for safe and secure data sharing, and train them to report any issues they encounter. 

Executives should also create a governance plan that outlines policies and procedures customized for your organization's citizen development efforts. For instance, data governance is not a new concept in the business world, and the aim is to ensure that data can be accessed, used, shared, and protected for a specific purpose within businesses. 

Similarly, Security Governance and Design-time/Runtime Governance also have maturity models, and citizen development is not the only domain where it is applied. However, the concern is more in the case of citizen development; as the number and type of developers rise, the need to have governance controls to be part of the tools, lifecycle, and practices increases. 

It's important to understand that governance is not a one-size-fits-all solution. Organizations need to create a governance plan that considers their specific needs. It includes defining who will access critical data and app publishing capability, how it can be shared and used, and what policies should be implemented to protect it.

Secured Data Governance with AgilePoint 

Risk mitigation and data governance pose an ongoing challenge in large, complex, data- and process-based apps. If you plan to enforce governance and cyber security controls at scale, AgilePoint gives you the tools that work for your organization. 

The AgilePoint platform makes it easy for organizations to manage the security and governance settings that are most appropriate for their enterprise. The platform provides IT with three layers of management that can be configured, deployed and accessed by the company. It has over eighty-five permission settings and pre-built roles tailored to fit most companies' business needs: 

• Business layer: It is where the information architecture is defined and the business rules, policies, or procedures for managing information assets are included. 
• Process layer: It represents the execution of business processes, such as workflows, activities and data processing. 
• Data layer: It is composed of external data sources, such as databases and tables, and internal data sources, such as records.  
  
  AgilePoint provides an end-to-end business solution for enterprises seeking to automate and transform their processes through low-code development