PreEmptive Thoughts from Build 2017

May 22, 2017 3446 Views Gabriel Torok

Like so many of us returning from Build 2017, we at PreEmptive are feeling both energized and highly motivated. Energized because of the truly impressive innovation coming out of both Microsoft and our larger ecosystem – and motivated because we can all see the expanding concern around application risk management and data security in this rapidly evolving world – and of course, that is where PreEmptive Solutions comes in.

Microsoft announced (and released) a broad range of software at Build: Improving Azure, Visual Studio, cross platform application development, and DevOps automation and efficiencies. You don’t have to hear about these from us – Microsoft published a nice Build wrap up here. I’m proud to say that PreEmptive Solutions were able to continue our 15+ year tradition of keeping pace with Microsoft’s remarkable cadence with a few announcements of our own.

At Build 2017, we announced

An update of our debug defense capabilities inside Dotfuscator to defend against native debuggers in addition to managed,
Enhancements of our Xamarin integration to significantly simplify and automate our protection there, and
Support for .NET Standard and Dotfuscator CE support for VSTS.

In other words, we also “announced (and released) a broad range software at Build improving Azure, Visual Studio, cross platform application development, and DevOps automation and efficiencies.”

I think my lasting impression of Build 2017 (and I’ve attended every Build so far) will be that the general awareness – even sophistication – around application risk management concepts and practices has never been higher. In fact, in the keynote (see image below) Microsoft noted that a specific key concern developers have is in making sure “their stuff” does not get hacked.

I see this jump in awareness as a direct consequence of the increasing importance of applications in all that we do. The higher the value of an application (and applications in general), the more it is worth protecting. And application developers attending Build certainly demonstrated the high value and impact of the work they’re doing. This is going to be an exciting year.

Google IO Recap: Firebase, Jetpack, Kotlin, and R8

PreEmptive had the opportunity to send a couple of representatives to Google IO this year. IO 2019 didn't tell us what dessert starts with a Q, but it did showcase some great tools and frameworks as well as provide insight into the direction of Android:

For the third year in a row, Microsoft’s Build conference set up shop in the Washington State Convention Center, giving technology professionals a glimpse into what lies ahead for the Redmond giant.

Previous years highlighted key advancements such as Microsoft 365, the Azure Cosmos DB and Xamarin — in 2019, the company went all-in with announcements for a new Visual Studio, .NET evolution and the emergence of true Linux on Windows OS.

Here’s a look at the best of Build 2019.

Last month we blogged about R8 and Google's build architecture changes and hinted at things to come in PreEmptive Protection - DashO, our powerful Java obfuscation and application protection tool that integrates tightly with Android. Today, we're excited to announce a public beta of our next major release: DashO 10 (Beta 2).

This new version of DashO works together with R8 to protect Android apps and libraries.

Whether you're using Azure Pipelines, TeamCity, Jenkins, or your local dev machine, Dotfuscator Professional is easier to integrate than ever before.

Last August, we released an easier, better way to integrate Dotfuscator into your build process. We quickly followed that with new instructions for Xamarin integration - making Dotfuscator the easiest-to-integrate (and still most-effective!) Xamarin protection product, by far.

Today, we're releasing a suite of features and components that make it much easier to provision Dotfuscator into your continuous integration environment, making it easy to use in your automated build, too.

Google recently introduced R8, a new tool designed to replace ProGuard as the default shrinker in the Android build process. R8 is meant to produce as-good-or-better outputs than ProGuard, and to do so faster than ProGuard does, thereby reducing overall build times. It will be enabled by default in the next release of Android Gradle Plugin (v3.4).

This change removes a long-standing component (ProGuard) and replaces it with entirely-new code that does essentially the same thing. Why would Google do such an expensive, risky thing?

PreEmptive Thoughts from Build 2017

Google IO Recap: Firebase, Jetpack, Kotlin, and R8

Microsoft Build 2019: Visual Studio Expands, .NET Evolves and Windows Gets a Kernel

DashO 10 Beta 2: Android Support, Rebuilt From the Ground Up

It's Never Been Easier to Automate Your Builds With Dotfuscator Professional

R8: A Step in Google's Android Build Performance Roadmap

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Google IO Recap: Firebase, Jetpack, Kotlin, and R8

Microsoft Build 2019: Visual Studio Expands, .NET Evolves and Windows Gets a Kernel

DashO 10 Beta 2: Android Support, Rebuilt From the Ground Up

It's Never Been Easier to Automate Your Builds With Dotfuscator Professional

R8: A Step in Google's Android Build Performance Roadmap

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