At first sight, cybersecurity and innovation seem to be mutually exclusive. While security programs aim to reduce risks, innovation initiatives involve taking risks.
However, used together, innovation and security can bring a lot of opportunities to companies if managed strategically. To pursue these new opportunities, today’s organizations must find the right balance between staying ahead of the competition, experimenting with new technologies, and ensuring these initiatives are built with strong security.
Although 80% of companies believe that security concerns obstruct innovation, there are still ways to implement innovative capabilities and adopt effective security measures while creating a competitive advantage. The answer: DevOps culture and practices are how you get there!
DevOps began to gain popularity in 2008 when DevOpsDays started in Ghent, Belgium. Many companies started to understand the importance of small frequent deployments and cross-functional teams. A side effect was those who fully embraced the practices had higher software security than their peers. Moreover, studies showed that in 2016, 86% of enterprises in the US were starting to focus on developing new software quickly through agile practices. However, back then, many companies adopting DevOps and cloud technologies were still in the very early stage of implementation.
But in 2022, our companies look different, with 77% of organizations currently relying on DevOps culture and practices to deploy software, many of which are further along their DevOps journey.
DevOps: The Key to Security and Innovation
DevOps describes technology processes and a culture shift meant to accelerate the delivery of higher-quality technology products by automating procedures, which can fulfill many compliance and security requirements.
So, why should organizations use DevOps to gain a competitive advantage? Here is a couple of reasons why:
Increases Speed to Market
DevOps streamlines communication and collaboration between technology teams. The practice also shortens the life cycle of building technology and accelerates code deployment and testing by removing barriers like paperwork and constant approvals for changes. Therefore, it improves company efficiency through time-saving and increased speed to market driving business value.
Automation is Essential
Cross-functional teams using DevOps culture and practices can share code bases and detect issues early on. Issues can be detected quickly and reduced through automated testing, continuous integration, and deployment, which minimizes defects making their way into production. At the same time, organizations that do not implement cross-functional collaboration through automation begin to experience bottlenecks in testing and eventually security.
Overcome Security & Compliance Challenges
DevOps is primarily based on communication and collaboration across the entire team, including software engineers, QA, operations, and business managers – everyone in the company. It, therefore, allows organizations to integrate security and audit capabilities into their processes effortlessly. Using automation improves visibility in how we build our products without slowing down the speed to market with manual processes. Thus, DevOps culture and practices provide the perfect way to adopt security measures without sacrificing innovation.
Better Approach for Employee Education
In many cases, we train our engineering teams in security to ensure we build more secure products. Cross-functional teams through DevOps culture and practices create cross-functional visibility within the team enabling the team to tackle complex projects more securely. Embracing modern technology culture and creating cross-functional collaboration has become crucial in evolving your team’s capabilities.
In conclusion, compliance and security can coexist with innovation in organizations, and DevOps culture and practices with DevSecOps represent the most effective way to achieve this.
Want to learn more about how to use innovative technology practices to build best in class security? We got you covered! Reach out today, and we can discuss how to successfully implement DevOps and DevSecOps in your organization.
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