Secure collaborative software development environm

Question

I am looking for a secure collaborative software development environment, such as Chaperon, that works in the cloud. It should prevent code from being copied-pasted out of the environment, and it should take all measures to prevent, detect and deter IP theft. It should, of course, include all usual IDE tools for subversion tracking and debugging. Any suggestions?

Answer 1

The costs of doing so are mostly far too high, and there are serious questions about the capabilities of systems such as Chaperon to withstand real attacks. Security by obscurity has a very bad name, and Windows-based systems have too little control over their environment to be secure against professionals.

It is a lot cheaper to simply hire a good local team and make them want to continue working for you.

Please note that I do not mean the costs of buying a system such as Chaperon, but the costs of operating it and not being able to cooperate effectively. The inefficiencies of development easily cost you a factor 10 in development time when compared to using a modern agile development process.

In such a restricted environment, requirements need to be detailed and documented too early far more rigorously. This is mostly waste (in Lean terms). Decisions should be made as late as possible, in order to make maximum use of gained insight.

The restricted visibility of the overall picture also makes it very difficult to refactor and optimize the architecture and code, so you're likely to end up with much lower quality code.