If you've been in software development for more than a few days, you've encountered technical debt. You know the drill: those quick fixes that were supposed to be temporary, the "we'll come back to this later" comments in the code, and the mounting pile of refactoring tasks that never quite make it to the top of the sprint planning board. What starts as a manageable issue slowly compounds until you're drowning in a codebase that's held together with digital duct tape and prayer.

The frequency that I hear "what security obligations?" or "what data processing requirements?" from CTOs is astounding, particularly for companies that are business-to-business (B2B) or serving European and Canadian markets. This leads me to think that technical leaders in these organizations are not prepared for a very large and very public compliance gap in their businesses.