In our modern world, security isn’t something added as an afterthought. Products people trust are built with a focus on security from inception. This means product management needs to adapt. Instead of ship it now, fix it later, security needs to be an essential element throughout the entire workflow. This can be hard for product managers who have to deploy features rapidly while also maintaining data security.
The best product leaders are able to harmonize quick development with solid security. They know a product’s safety is as important as its functionality and that preventing issues at an early stage is much better than fixing them once a problem has occurred. This forward-thinking approach distinguishes a good product manager from one that genuinely safeguards users.
This is the requirement for success in high-pressure situations. It’s a skill that requires expertise in both product and security. Dayo Paul Samuel, a senior product manager, has mastered Secure-by-Design Product Roadmapping.
He views security as a means to advance, rather than something that decelerates processes. He ensures his teams develop products that are innovative, fast, secure, and reliable.
An essential component of Dayo’s plan is the inclusion of cybersecurity requirements directly into the product’s plans. He does more than just add a security sprint. He puts security into his product goals. For example, a goal might be “Achieve 99.9% uptime with no critical security problems in Q3.” This makes security a main business focus, not just a tech task. When deciding what to work on, he gives security tasks the same importance as new features. He uses a scoring system that looks at both business value and risk reduction. This stops security problems from building up and makes sure important security work always gets done.
Dayo is also great at figuring out the tough choices between shipping features fast and adding security into the design. He understands that every day a feature isn’t available is a chance for feedback and improvement lost. But he also knows that one security issue can ruin trust and cause harm to a company’s name. He adds threat modeling into the beginning stages of product design. His teams find potential threats and design the system to prevent them before any code is written. If they are building a new sign-in feature, they would model how a malicious actor could bypass it and build the feature to protect against those tries.
A major part of his job is working with security engineers to ensure new features don’t pose damages. He brings security engineers in the ideation phase, making them partners from the start. Dayo promotes a system where a product manager and a security engineer work together to make key architectural decisions. This ensures that features are designed with security as a priority, preventing the need to fix issues later. This also keeps tech debt from building up, which can stop a team from improving things in the future.
Dayo Paul Samuel demonstrates that a secure product is a result of careful planning, not just luck. He has proven that a product manager’s biggest value is being able to combine quick development with cybersecurity, making sure a product is fast, works well, and can be trusted. His way of approaching secure-by-design product roadmapping gives his company a big advantage built on trust and integrity.
