As Automox’s Director of Quality Engineering, Senthil Kannan ensures a high quality for each feature release by confirming quality is built in from the beginning.
“Here at Automox, we see that quality cannot be tested out — it has to be built in. That’s the philosophy and mindset we’re operating from.”
In this week’s Get to Know the Automox Team blog post, Senthil talks about his role as Director of Quality Engineering, his thoughts about the cybersecurity space and why sees himself as the advocate of our customers.
Cybersecurity's Great Opportunity
'Cyberthreat is real’ and Automox provides a direct impact to an everyday user’s cybersecurity posture and life. Senthil is excited that he can feel that impact as an end user himself, and that enables him to drive the quality strategy for Automox from a user perspective.
“The security solution we are addressing presents a direct impact that could be correlated to the user. It makes a big difference and gives me immense satisfaction because I can see how my work helps shape the quality of our product that makes the life of our customers easier. That’s what really motivates me.”
When your house or apartment is broken into, that probably only impacts you. But in the cyber realm, the impact of a breach extends well beyond you, across the whole automation chain, potentially having a significant impact on someone you don’t even know. Ignorance or a failure to secure your infrastructure has the opportunity to affect anyone, and that’s what makes cybersecurity so important.
Anyone is a Target
While some hackers and bad actors focus on specific companies just for the notoriety or ability to say, “I hacked so and so,” most attackers will just randomly attack anybody, regardless of the industry they are in and irrespective of use cases or functionality. As a result, everyone is vulnerable and prone to attack. No one particular industry is a target, because technological advances have opened the door for any organization to be a target of attacks.
“You don’t need to look for vulnerabilities, they’re everywhere. Everyone is a target. So, stop thinking and start patching. Take no chances. It’s better to be safe than sorry.”
As such, cybersecurity must be a part of any organizations culture, according to Senthil. Organizations across industries should try to influence their team culture with a security consciousness. Awareness and simplicity is the key here. Being aware of the vulnerability impact and understanding of how simple steps can prevent disaster goes a long way in building that culture.
Visibility and Making Cybersecurity Easy
Adopting good cyber hygiene does not have to be a nightmare. Seamlessly automating cyber hygiene without impacting the user’s daily routine helps in easier adoption amongst all employees. For most organizations, Senthil says there is no plan of action until a breach happens and it’s too late. When it’s difficult to see the impact of cybersecurity, the benefits are not easily quantifiable.
As a result, Senthil and the rest of the quality team try to put themselves in the shoes of our customers to determine which features to prioritize when augmenting the Automox product. They’re constantly aiming to provide that simplicity and security.
Advocate for Customers
As a part of the decision-making process, Senthil and other stakeholders participate in the product roadmap discussion, but creating an effective roadmap is not easy, particularly in an agile environment where changes happen frequently and unexpectedly. Being the director of quality engineering, Senthil helps influence the roadmap to enhance customer experience through product quality.
“I try to be the advocate of our customers, the product should do what it says, and do it consistently. Our team doesn’t cut any corners when it comes to quality.”
Whether it’s performance efficiency or bettering the user experience, we should know what the requirements are, we should know what the objectives of the feature we are shipping are and we should be aligned to meet those.
“The key is not to build a ‘car’ when the customer wants a ‘plane’.”
Once Senthil and his team understand the background of a feature that gives them clarity on what to focus on for a quality release. They work in close collaboration with the product management team, understanding the need for that particular feature and the objective they are trying to solve for.
“We try not to be aligned with simply just the design requirements, we try to align with the background of the feature request that is coming in as well. It helps to understand the background so that when we’re working on the features we’re able to cater to the design feedback. We try to help the quality during the build.”
Consequently, Senthil and the Automox engineering team utilize the product-led growth model to drive decision-making because “everyone has the opportunity to influence the product, it doesn’t have to be limited to a product manager.”
“As we see how the product is getting adopted or how the market is shifting, we should be able to organically adapt to that. Customers help us create the roadmap, but with product-led growth, we’re more agile in understanding what our customers need and giving it to them.”
The ability to be agile and nimble in terms of responding to security issues is what ensures Automox is continuously improving so that we are always providing the highest quality product.
About Automox
Facing growing threats and a rapidly expanding attack surface, understaffed and alert-fatigued organizations need more efficient ways to eliminate their exposure to vulnerabilities. Automox is a modern cyber hygiene platform that closes the aperture of attack by more than 80% with just half the effort of traditional solutions.
Cloud-native and globally available, Automox enforces OS & third-party patch management, security configurations, and custom scripting across Windows, Mac, and Linux from a single intuitive console. IT and SecOps can quickly gain control and share visibility of on-prem, remote and virtual endpoints without the need to deploy costly infrastructure.
Experience modern, cloud-native patch management today with a 15-day free trial of Automox and start recapturing more than half the time you're currently spending on managing your attack surface. Automox dramatically reduces corporate risk while raising operational efficiency to deliver best-in-class security outcomes, faster and with fewer resources.
