News

Low-Code/No-Code: Democratizing Software Development

Learn how low-code/no-code platforms are revolutionizing software development and empowering organizations.

Published

2 years ago

June 20, 2024

ManageEngine

low-code no-code democratizing software development

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It’s no secret software development is no easy task; writing good code is a skill that takes years to master and is a continual learning experience. Coding demands a highly advanced and in-depth understanding of programming languages and development protocols, especially considering the complexity of enterprise applications. It’s certainly not something the average Joe can just pick up and learn.

Demand Vs Supply: The Global Developer Shortage

As more and more processes are automated, this creates a need for new applications, and the bottom-line is there’s a global shortage of skilled developers to meet these application demands.

We’ve reached a point where there are far too many vacancies and not enough highly skilled developers available — despite numerous layoffs — and this shortage is only expected to get worse.

Organizations need to change their approach to combating this shortage. Instead of waiting for a skilled developer to turn up, the focus must shift to simplifying software development, enabling anyone to participate in the development process even without formal training. Enter citizen development.

Citizen development is an approach to software development that revolves around enabling non-IT-trained individuals in an organization to develop software, workflows, and automations without having to rely on skilled coders.

Software Development Doesn’t Need To Be Complicated

Due to ease of use, low-code/no-code (LC/NC) development platforms are leading the citizen development charge. These platforms make software development accessible and fairly easy to pick up due to the straightforward and intuitive interfaces they feature.

With LC/NC platforms, the development process can be as simple as dragging and dropping software elements and linking them to create workflows. The underlying code governing the behavior of these elements is prewritten and designed to help them work together. Thanks to these platforms, developers no longer have to write each line of code individually, freeing them up to focus on more pressing tasks. These platforms also enable those without formal software development training and experience to develop simple applications or software functions. This can significantly shorten development times, enabling rapid delivery.

More and more organizations are beginning to adopt LC/NC platforms into their development process; Gartner predicts that “by 2025, 70% of new applications developed by organizations will use low-code or no-code technologies“.

It’s Not All Smooth Sailing, However..

Yes, LC/NC platforms can greatly speed up the software development process, but they lack the scalability and control traditional coding offers since you’re relying on the functionality of a completely distinct development platform. And while nowhere near as steep as pro-code development, LC/NC platforms do still have a learning curve, especially when you’re someone with limited or zero software development experience. This means training costs will also have to come into the equation when an organization aims to equip a team of citizen developers.

When dealing with citizen developers and their relatively limited skillsets, experts still have an important role to play in the development process. Someone needs to test the applications developed by citizen developers to make sure everything is working as it should, and who better to handle testing than the experts? And it’s not just testing; they can even make optimizations when necessary.

A Future Where Skilled Coders And Citizen Developers Can Work Together

The increasing adoption rates of LC/NC platforms aren’t a threat to developer jobs. These platforms aren’t going to replace them; rather, they can free the experts up to actually focus on critical development tasks instead of repetitive and simple processes.

If anything, the increased adoption rates of LC/NC platforms will drive up the stock of expert coders because we’re looking at a future where anyone can develop software but only a few can code.

News

ESET Bets On Specialized Security AI At 0.5% The Training Cost

ESET says NeoCortex can estimate an attacker’s next move, with a kill switch and human oversight built in to keep it from going rogue.

Published

5 days ago

November 4, 2026

Dana Saadeh

eset bets on specialized security ai at 0.5% the training cost

A sign-in anomaly, a suspicious process launch and an unusual connection may look harmless alone. Together, they can describe an intrusion that is hard for security to teams to piece together.

To solve that problem, ESET announced ESET NeoCortex on November 4, 2026: a specialized foundational AI model for cybersecurity. It powers ESET LiveCortex, available within the ESET PROTECT Platform, which connects fragmented security signals and turns them into actionable incidents.

Filtering is the main selling point, with LiveCortex processing billions of raw telemetry events daily, and just 0.00111% of them contributing to incidents presented to customers. The aim is less alert fatigue and more analyst time spent on threats that matter.

NeoCortex is built on world-model architecture, learning how digital environments behave and how events relate. ESET says that lets it reconstruct missing incident context, recognize similar past cases and estimate an attacker’s likely next step – what the company calls “minus-one-day defense,” a chance to intervene before the next stage unfolds. ESET points to Black October, the week leading up to October 25, 2026, when critical security issues affecting PHP, Linux, GitLab and other key systems demanded rapid, prioritized responses, as the kind of moment where that context matters.

ESET’s internal research also suggests a specialized model like NeoCortex can be trained at up to 200 times lower cost than a large general reasoning model, while delivering more accurate, defense-focused results. The company credits optimized training, a focus on cybersecurity vocabulary, lower computing requirements and privately owned hardware.

Also Read: Dubai Says Its Deepfake Detector Needs Just 7 Seconds Of Video

“AI is accelerating both cyberattacks and cyberdefenses. With ESET NeoCortex, we are applying our AI investment to develop specialized foundational cybersecurity intelligence that remains under our control and strengthens, rather than replaces, human expertise,” said Juraj Malcho, Chief Technology Officer at ESET.

As part of the design, NeoCortex forms part of a layered architecture combining specialized models, deterministic controls, correlation logic, validation, auditability and expert human oversight. Safeguards include restricted sandboxes, read-only tools, continuous monitoring, defined usage and token limits, a kill switch and human oversight of critical response decisions. The model is also developed and self-hosted on ESET’s own infrastructure, which the company says reduces exposure to shifts among third-party AI providers, including commercial and geopolitical ones.