By necessity, developers will sometimes have access to our most intimate data – but does this leave us overexposed? Adam Alton looks at what happens behind the buttons.
Many companies have systems for handling their customer data that are built so employees can only access the data they’re supposed to. For example, an insurance company call-centre system might only allow the staff to see some parts of a customer’s account information and not others, depending on whether they work in claims or sales. Such systems often store a log of which staff have accessed a customer’s data and when, so if a member of staff does something they shouldn’t, the snooping is at least recorded. But no matter how restrictive or robust these systems are, they always have a flaw: someone has to build them.
This is not unique to software. If companies kept their customer data on paper locked in a vault, someone would still have to build the vault. But the process of building software presents two problems. The first is how do we know what’s been built? Creating software is a highly specialised skill; it’s often the case that someone managing the creation of a piece of software doesn’t have the skills to do the ‘construction’ work themselves. That in itself has many interesting consequences but the most pertinent issue here is if someone doesn’t understand the work being done, how are they going to check that the software being produced actually does what it’s meant to?
The obvious answer is to test it.
Let’s suppose we’ve commissioned some software for an insurance company call centre. We might have a requirement that if the system administrator has set one of the staff accounts as a claims handler, when that staff member logs in they cannot see how much any of the customers paid as their annual premium. We can set up some dummy accounts and customers and we can test that. And we can repeat the process for every requirement we have.
Esta historia es de la edición March 2019 de NET.
Comience su prueba gratuita de Magzter GOLD de 7 días para acceder a miles de historias premium seleccionadas y a más de 9,000 revistas y periódicos.
Ya eres suscriptor ? Conectar
Esta historia es de la edición March 2019 de NET.
Comience su prueba gratuita de Magzter GOLD de 7 días para acceder a miles de historias premium seleccionadas y a más de 9,000 revistas y periódicos.
Ya eres suscriptor? Conectar
Camille Gribbons
UX designer at Booking.com, Camille Gribbons reveals how she first got into the industry
THE 5G UI REVOLUTION
Tris Tolliday describes his vision of a web UI catapulted forwards by 5G
HOW TO SHOWCASE YOUR DEV SKILLS
Aude Barral shares 5 top tips for landing your dream developer job
KNIVES OUT
Murder mystery film, Knives Out, grabbed everyone’s attention, and so did the fun website that promoted it. Oblio tells Tom May how it created its innovative 3D navigation
HOW EMOTIONAL LABOUR HINDERS WOMEN IN TECH
Christine Brewis, head of digital marketing at Studio Graphene, discusses how gender parity in tech has changed over the last ten years, and what more can be done
EDAN KWAN
He swapped life as a singer for a career making eye-popping digital visuals. The Lusion founder chats to Tom May about battling demons, winning awards and where digital advertising is heading
ANDREW COULDWELL
The Brit in LA discusses his new book on design systems, Laying the Foundations
Top 5 Tips For Ensuring Web Content Is Accessible For All
Merlyn Meredith outlines five top tips for ensuring web content is accessible for all
WHAT DOES THE FUTURE HOLD FOR BROWSERS?
Nico Turco examines the state of play with browsers, whether developers should encourage diversity or monopoly and how Google fits into it all
YEARS IN THE MAKING
Exclusively for net: The latest in a series of anonymous accounts of nightmare clients