The Rise of DevSecOps: Part 2

This is the second post in our DevSecOps series. Read post 1

As companies adopt more complex software supply chains and handle increasing amounts of sensitive data, the risk of cyber attacks targeting this data has increased. In response, governments have implemented additional regulations meant to protect consumers, patients, and companies, including GDPR, HIPAA, and Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI-DSS). For many companies, complying with these regulations is not only a good idea; it’s the law, and failure to comply can result in significant fines and brand damage.

If you’re waiting until a development cycle is complete to check for compliance, your teams may face the following challenges:

• Discovering a compliance issue too late
• Lack of training in applicable regulations for developers
• Reworking logic and features to fix issues, causing delays in shipping new versions
• Introducing non-compliance into production code bases

DevSecOps shifts security and compliance responsibilities to the earlier stages of the development lifecycle, so developers don’t need to take on the full roles of operations engineers, security experts, or compliance officers. Instead, DevSecOps provides the proper training and tools to help developers build software with security and compliance in mind. This approach prevents costly rework by addressing issues before the final stages of development.

DevSecOps helps ensure compliance through consistency, simplified audits, automation, and communication.

Consistency at scale through automation

When software teams are small or development cycles are long, checking compliance might be simple. But, when release cycles shorten, and organizations scale development quickly, it becomes more difficult to understand the full scope of changes and how they intersect with regulations.

DevSecOps teams move quickly at scale, automating much of the CI/CD pipeline. The answer to enforcing compliance at scale also lies within DevOps automation. Teams can apply regulatory compliance checks at each development phase before it’s allowed to continue to the next stage.

Automation reduces the cognitive load on busy developers and protects your investment.

Streamlined Audits and Reports

When organizations incorporate compliance into their DevSecOps practice, it is easier to document compliance processes, reduce human errors, and generate compliance reports.

Generated reports reduce the time and effort spent on audits, reducing interruptions to the software development life cycle.

Communication and Training

DevSecOps eliminates silos between developers and the security and legal teams that previously validated regulatory compliance. By working closely together, teams design software with compliance in mind and minimize the duplicated work of the previous model, which delayed compliance checks until the final stages.

When teams work together, they raise awareness of the relevant regulations and identify the best ways to meet the requirements. However, additional training that focuses on your industry’s regulations and best practices can help developers and QA testers understand better why they’re building software in specific ways.

Questions about DevSecOps?

Contact us to see how ReleaseTEAM can help your business meet regulatory requirements through improved DevOps processes, automated checks, and tools.