BugZero’s Position on Software Risk Management: Interview with Sam Rozenberg

Risk management in today’s world is complex – and the cost of outages increases every year. Too many organizations are exposed to operational risks in the form of dynamic software vulnerabilities. This reality poses an enormous challenge – especially for enterprises, because in order to remain industry leaders, they must lower their IT risk and maintain a competitive edge.

In a world where 80% of datacenter managers have experienced an outage in the last three years, software risk management is worth prioritizing.

But how is this actually done?

Below, we explore the answer to that question in the realm of software risk management.

To provide insight into this issue, we’ve interviewed Sam Rozenberg, a member of our Board of Advisors. Sam is an accomplished innovator, leader, and entrepreneur who brings 20 years of experience in IT operations. He’s successfully invested in a dozen businesses throughout his career.

Before we elaborate on our modern solution to software risk management, it’s critical to understand the current state of risk mitigation.

Sam discussed the reality that every year we should expect 20 or more global enterprise IT outages. Each will cause major financial loss, customer disruption, and reputational loss.  In the past, companies have generally followed three methods to mitigate the risk of downtime.  

1. Insure Against It: This method involves transferring risk to an insurance company by purchasing insurance policies. There’s a catch, though. While insurance policies do provide a safety net against disasters like fires or physical damage, they do not protect against ransomware or other system failures typically caused by software bugs. Not to mention their premiums can be quite costly. 

2. Harden Against It: Companies strive to fortify their defenses by implementing security measures, patches, and updates. This approach aims to make the organization’s systems resilient to threats, but it can be resource-intensive and a patchwork approach will not eliminate all threats. 

3. Accept It: Businesses accept certain risks, as it’s considered an inherent part of their operations. While this approach may work for low-impact risks, it’s far from ideal for most ITOps situations.

Enterprises need to manage IT risk at a scale that overwhelms human capabilities. Even a dedicated individual for each third-party software vendor to manually manage risk is insufficient. The lack of best practices only exacerbates this problem. The dependency on vendor support, with no standardized processes or communication standards, creates a precarious situation.

He went on to say that, to become more agile and innovative, enterprises need to rethink their IT management strategies. Traditional approaches are similar to dealing with canceled flights at an airport. A paying customer doesn’t care if the airline has insurance to give them a check to cover their flight. They’re sitting at the airport and they’re angry about the situation. In other words, insurance is great, but it shouldn’t be how modern organizations operate.   

No business should want to exist in a perpetual state of tension as they wait a major IT outage to happen. As the software estate expands, keeping up with changing versions and third-party vendor updates becomes an insurmountable challenge. Every software ecosystem is dynamic, making it impossible for organizations to manually monitor, assess, and mitigate every risk.

The path to innovation starts with adjusting the level of risk enterprises are willing to accept. In this era of digital transformation, a standardized approach is crucial. This is where BugZero steps in to revolutionize software risk management.

How Can Companies Reduce Their Accepted Risk? 

 As one of our Board members, Sam is a little biased on BugZero’s transformative approach to software risk management. But BugZero is truly a first-of-its kind solution. We move away from considering operational defect risk a cost of doing business by providing a mature and repeatable process that hardens organizations against this risk. Now IT Operations teams can manage operational defects holistically, similar to how IT Security teams manage vulnerabilities.  

Here’s how BugZero accomplishes this: 

BugZero is a new best practice for IT risk. Just as cybersecurity policies protect organizations from digital threats, BugZero protects against operational defect risk. Enterprises can now proactively manage software defect risk instead of merely accepting it as a byproduct of their operations.

Each company typically devises its own strategies to address software risks, leading to inconsistencies. BugZero introduces a standardized solution that can be adopted across all teams in all enterprises, simplifying the risk management processes and ensuring alignment.

The status quo of software risk management – characterized by insurance, fortification, or just accepting the risk – is no longer acceptable. The future of enterprise risk management demands a systematic and automated approach.   

BugZero is that solution. 

With BugZero, enterprises can embrace digital transformation and maintain a competitive edge while mitigating IT risk. Don’t sit and wait for something to go wrong. The best software risk management strategy is a proactive one.

Stay ahead of IT disruptions and explore how we can revolutionize your risk management strategy. Learn more about how BugZero works today!