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Hello everyone, welcome to the Five Minutes Podcast! Today I’d like to talk about why do I believe IT projects may be riskier than what we think, you know, if we go back maybe 15, 20 years ago, of course, we had a much lower pace of IT development, and the changes that we faced in the past 20 years were just incredible, right? On the technology, on the interface, on the speed, and everything. But my question to all of you and mostly to those who work on IT in IT in web development, et cetera, is that. Did we evolve our management ability and our risk approach to cope with this development of technology in why I'm telling you this?
It's because I see this almost paranoid behavior off release release, the speed agility release release MVPs MVPs, We need to go to market, go to market. And first, all of this sounds extremely exciting. I love that. I love that when I have an opportunity to do an update on my website or on my Spotify, I want that this is obvious isn't, it's a natural behavior, but to what we need to understand that the world today is very different, If we compare 20 years ago, why first, most of the business they have, if not all, but a massive part of their business, relying on technology. Second, the crime moved from the streets. I'm not saying that they left the streets to cybercrime. Today, for example, if you are a bank, I'm pretty sure that your biggest challenge is not okay, how do I make my branch safer?
Yes, this can happen. I have no doubt that for example, it can happen a crime inside a branch, but the big, big crime is happening in the cyber arena. It's someone, you know, drinking a soda at the can in his or her bedroom that is stealing $600 million in Bitcoins because now cash that used to be paper is paperless at credit card, that used to be plastic it's now online, everything you buy online, you sell online, you negotiate online, you deliver products, online, everything.
So these bring a massive breach that if sometimes with the best intentions if we are not aware of that, we can expose our organization to a total collapse in terms of security. And I'm not just saying that you may hear this and say, oh, but I don't work with a social network providing music. Okay. Let's take the example of Spotify and say, okay, the financial transactions are, I would say, a small piece of the code I'm developing, but then I ask you and fraud, privacy, cyberbullying in all these amended consequences of these kinds of problems.
Sometimes we just think, oh, we are creating a product where X, Y, and Z can connect to another X, Y, and Z somewhere, and they can share a playlist, they can send messages, and this, and this is all amazing until you have on the line someone that is not with a good intention. And these sometimes I'm pretty sure, okay? I'm pretty sure I don't know Mark Zuckerberg, but I'm pretty sure that when he created Facebook, he probably did this with the best intention.
He didn't think that people would misuse the platform to spread fake news or to do bullying or stalking people. I don't believe in that, but these were unintended consequences. And what I see, and what is important is that those who are developing these codes and these new products that will create a revolution in the way we operate, all of you need to be mindful of these unintended consequences. It can, someone misuse my social media. Can someone misuse my online shopping experience? Can someone misuse my app where I share photos of babies over the web? Can someone misuse that? And how I can avoid this to happen? How I can improve security? Today, everybody's talking about low code, no code sits in development, and this is absolutely incredible. And I'm completely passionate about this topic. But if someone puts in place something using data from a third person on the web with no security protocol and no proper environment, these will put this person at risk almost immediately.
And these are something that we need to be mindful of. It's not only speed because when things go wrong if you create a new experience of online bank and these open a breach for a cybercrime, you can simply shut down the whole financial system. We saw what happened recently with Bitcoin traders, where someone stills almost a billion dollars worth of value in Bitcoins. Okay. I know that they sort this out later and they returned the money. But imagine if this happens and you know, and people just lose their money.
So these are a big trend. It's a sad trend, but it's a big trend. Then what is my final message to you is that I don't work directly on technology, but I beg you men and women working on this are that inside your mind, that IT is an absolutely serious business. And there is a massive amount of people that are relying on you to make their lives safer, to avoid fraud, to keep their privacy, that they can share what they want with who they want, that we will protect young people.
And these are for me, something that I feel sometimes it's not on the top of the agenda of these organizations. And I think that is our duty of care and our stewardship to make sure that we are producing things that people will learn joy, that people will have a massive experience with the minimum, if not, zero, side-effect think always about this and see you next week with another five Minutes Podcast.