Discovering an error in the coding phase of an application costs five times as much to fix versus discovering the same error in the initial planning phase. Leave it till the component testing phase and you’re looking at 10 times the cost. One of the main threats to businesses and government agencies alike are outdated operating systems. Legacy applications, which make up the majority of business operating systems in the U.S., are chock full of loopholes and vulnerabilities. 10 to 20 twenty years is an eternity in tech time. Catching an error post-release results in a 3,000% increase in cost, so imagine how costly vulnerabilities in dated applications are.
Strong cybersecurity platforms protect overall business interests, including critical sales components such as brand and reputation. Security breaches are not only costly, they also damage hard-earned credibility. A single publicized attack — like the recent breach at Ticketmaster [link to social carousel] — can undo a carefully constructed reputation overnight, bringing sales down with it. 76% of consumers are worried about the security of their online data, demonstrating the importance of data privacy in the mind of your customers.
With all the security challenges presented by legacy systems, it may seem like a no-brainer to simply upgrade and rebuild from the ground up — but legacy software can function as a mainframe application or operating system. Rebuilding requires downtime and pausing business as usual, which can range from highly inconvenient to potentially implausible, depending on the scope of the software’s involvement in routine company functions. Beyond the challenge of overhauling complex systems to an entirely new platform, modern applications are expensive.
Far more expensive, however, is the fallout from a security breach. The problem with legacy applications is far riskier than a user-experience inconvenience - a single human error can lead to a malware attack more costly than the upkeep of the system. Without a doubt, investing in a new system will offer more holistic protection by safeguarding customer records, critical infrastructure, and IP firewalls. Considering all of the risks of legacy systems, the cost-benefit analysis still tends to lean heavily towards modernizing and migrating legacy applications.
Modernizing legacy applications preserves the integrity of the original code and critical data points, ultimately re-designing the architecture of the applications to improve functionality and align with modern computing principles. The re-architecting of legacy code resolves many technical limitations, but some challenges still exist. Data interfaces and dependencies, batch schedulers, custom programs, and cybersecurity integration must ensure dependable future functionality and security.
Accenture’s latest State of Cyber Resilience report reveals that 18% of companies still only deploy cybersecurity controls as a reactive measure, once vulnerabilities have been flagged. The same report indicates that companies that require cybersecurity controls before new solutions are deployed, apply cybersecurity incrementally as transformation milestones are achieved, and assign cybersecurity representatives to the core transformation team are more resilient and likely to achieve long-term profit growth. As critical as modernization is, the prohibitive cost of replacing a system entirely leads businesses to prefer migration over updating their legacy applications. Modernization serves as the solution to best protect company data given the time and cost constraints that arise.
Many of our cybersecurity experts have walked in your shoes at various points in their careers — eager to rebuild the whole system but stuck in the ongoing process of modernizing and migrating legacy applications. CodeHunter’s automated malware hunting solution prevents the loss of both time and money commonly attributed to manual testing and human error. Our automated solution outperforms manual testing on all fronts — including accuracy, human resources, and time — and functions with unprecedented accuracy. This allows companies to test their modernization coding for vulnerabilities before it is implemented, drastically reducing the risk of vulnerabilities when the revised system is deployed. In addition, it supports collaboration across team members with a single, integrated platform, and reduces time spent hunting and resolving malware from weeks to mere hours, or even minutes.