Compliance is not a separate activity from software development. It is engineering discipline codified into standards, controls, and measurable requirements. For .NET developers, compliance means understanding how architectural decisions—authentication mechanisms, logging strategies, error handling, secrets management—directly determine whether your system satisfies audit requirements or violates them.
The traditional model separated developers from compliance. Security teams defined policies while developers wrote code without understanding how those policies connected to actual implementation. That separation collapses in cloud-native environments where developers control infrastructure, define access patterns, and manage sensitive data through code.
Compliance as Engineering Practice
Regulatory frameworks like GDPR, HIPAA, and PCI-DSS are increasingly translated into technical standards. ISO/IEC standards bridge that gap by specifying control requirements in terms that technical teams can implement, test, and verify. Developers who understand these standards build systems that satisfy compliance requirements by default.
